Dr. James Zogby

Jim Zogby: Hi, I’m Jim Zogby, and welcome to tonight's "Viewpoint".
We will discuss a new book on the future of American politics and culture and the results of new polling of troops towards the presidential candidates, George W. Bush, Congress, and more.
First, I want to welcome an active leader for the development of Palestinian civil society, grass-roots democracy, and internal reform.
A member of the Palestinian parliament, and 2005 presidential candidate, he is also secretary of the Palestinian national initiative.
Trained as a medical doctor, he is co-founder of the Palestinian medical relief society and has been involved in a number of Israeli-Palestinian peace meetings.
Thanks for joining us.
I appreciate your coming here.
-- Israeli-Palestinian peaceful nations.
I would like to get your take on a visit from the press you have been seeing and people you have been talking to.
How is the busy going, and what our expectations there about the presidential election here?

Mustafa Bargouti: It is good timing to be here because I get to be with people who are probably close to Obama, although I have some opinions that could affect it.
I must say that his candidacy, the fact that he is running for the presidency really excites people.
I think change is what the United States really needs.
Sometimes, the United States corrects itself, and we believe this is a time for serious correction after what happened in Iraq.
But I have a feeling from the visits that he made that he is applying change to everybody everywhere.
The fact that he gave so many hours to an Israeli site and 45 minutes in Palestine was probably not balanced enough.
Had he visited a refugee camp or kindergarten or school, it would have been more effective than the war itself.
It was also disappointing, and the fact that he repeats the same line of unifying the capital of Israel and fails to say that it should also be the capital of Palestine and fails to see that there is international law that should be applied that cannot be neglected.
Today, I have been given a fantastic and exciting speech in Berlin.
In Palestine, he said no walls should exist between anybody.
You are saying that in a place that got rid of the wall, Berlin, but he did not say that in Palestine.

JZ: The press conference in Israel about Jerusalem, let's listen to what he says about it and then get your comments.
Barack Obama had a press conference in Israel where the issue of Jerusalem came up.
[video] Obama: Jerusalem will be the capital of Israel, and I have said that before and will say it again.
I also have said that it is important that we do not simply slice the city in half, but I have also said that that is a final status issues.
That is an issue that has to be dealt with the parties involved, the Palestinians and Israelis, and it is not the job of the United States to dictate the form in which that will take, but rather to support the efforts that are being made right now to resolve these very difficult issues, that have a long history.

JZ: Does that seem like a correct statement? That certainly is a correction from the initial statement he had made before.

MB: It is a correction in a sense that he says it has to be negotiated, which is true, but again, it is an issue of being balanced.
He says it should be a capital of Israel, but not of Palestine, and that is the issue.

JZ: In effect, to be fair, nothing should preclude it from being the capital both cities, but it seems that what he meant was there should not be barriers or barbwire or walls dividing, which in fact, the walls now exist.

MB: That is not a problem, but the question is to say that Palestinians and Israelis are equally entitled, and you cannot ignore the Palestinians.
I say that because I care about him.
I say that because he is worried about the Jewish people, but he should worry about the Muslim vote.
He could get 95 percent of the vote, but he could lose part of it if he continues to be insensitive to the Palestinian issue.

JZ: Let's look at a couple of other things.
I do not have the song for them, but he made a couple of different observations.
This one, first.
He said everybody has got to have responsibilities and obligations in the process leading to two states.
Sometimes he thinks there's a tendency of each side to focus on the faults of the other instead of looking in the mirror and seeing what could be done to improve the situation.
I thought that was striking.
Nobody talks about Israel as having a need to look at itself in the mirror and correct itself, in choosing the Palestinians, but here are both sides being held accountable in that way.

MB: Maybe this would be a useful statement to be put in front of it.

JZ: And he has had, as in other instances where he has talked about being precluded.
Did they resonate there, or were they not known or heard of?

MB: In that sense, I do not think there is enough because this is what I told you.
He should have paid more attention to Palestinians.
I respect that he says it is its own state, but when he says it is the capital of Israel, it is not balanced.
One thing that worries me a lot, and I hope he will give attention to that, you cannot commit new policy with old tools.
You can't blame people who have failed in the process so many times, especially within the The Clinton administration, and think you have a new policy.
I want him to apply the sentence of change, of being proactive, since he is applying it to every other conflict.

JZ: One more quotation I want to put up, and then I want to talk about the situation in general, this was also from the IMAM press conference.
He said Israelis and Palestinians will both have to become amazes' in order to arrive at the two-state solution.
-- will both have to make compromises in order to arrive at the two-state solution.
The Palestinians are divided between Hamas, neither side having strong leadership.
An interesting observation on his part, but neither side has the ability to do what needs to be done.
Talk to me about the Palestinian side of that equation.
What are the prospects for Palestinians in fact coming together and having a unified position?
The assessment right now is that Hamas is in control of Gaza, but the Prime Minister is not in control of the West bank.

MB: That observation is very important.
First of all, I wish you would see that house dates are not just controlled by Hamas.
-- I wish you would see that Palestinians are not just controlled by Hamas.
We had before a national unity government.
It can be done again.
At that time, Secretary of State Rice promised us that the United States will deal with the government, even if it is not dealing with Hamas, and then that promise was broken by is really influence.
Today, we need to get Palestine back to unity, but the way to get there is what democracy.
What is important is to see that Palestinians are also entitled to a democracy like Israelis and Americans are, and that means giving these people the right to choose.
To let the Palestinians choose, and has to be accepted.
I'm certain that if we have elections again, there's not a single party that will be the majority.
There'll be a time to build coalitions and some kind of unity, but we need international unity of some kind, but only on the basis of democracy and people's participation.

JZ: If anyone wants to call, please do.
Join us from overseas…and from the U.S….
How comfortable are you with the process that is currently under way, or is it a non-process?
Is there anything going on that gives you a sense of countenance that something is moving forward?

MB: … To be honest with you, it is the rise of nonviolent, peaceful resistance in Palestine.
The people's choice. This determination, this resilience.
The press here is not sure what is happening in Palestine.
But that leaves out the actions on the ground.
Unfortunately, we do not see areas of progress.
Since Annapolis, we had 521 checkpoints, now we have 607.
Since Annapolis, the number of Palestinians has increased by 27%.
The American administration is silent about that, but we are not doing anything to prevent that.
What we need is something different, something serious.

JZ: Is it possible that we have moved beyond a two-state solution?
Many are saying that.

MB: This is the most common question I get.
I say this to many congressmen and senators that I need.
We are at the crossing point where if this goes on, the whole two-state option could be lost.
We could see the dying possibility of take away-states solutions, in which case, we'll be in conflict with only one state.

JZ: We are going to take a quick call and then take a break.
Caller from Oklahoma.

Caller: I was wondering if there is any possibility that the United Nations -- does it have any power at all to assist?

JZ: Thank you.
When asked if United States is being the sole bargainer … but where are we here?

MB: The challenge that Barack Obama faces or any modern president would face is the following -- the United States cannot be an honest broker and cannot monopolize the system being the only broker and at the same time be biased.
So I see it, to the United States, if you can be honest about it, do not do it.

JZ: Quick call from London, and then we go to a break.

Caller: Quick question.
Palestinians are always asked to compromise, but the two sides have to make compromises to get to a solution.
I cannot really see what the Palestinians can compromise.
They have nothing else to compromise.

JZ: I have to cut you off there because your back is against the wall, right?
…In terms of compromising.

MB: We do not have anything else to add.
The fact that we accept the two-state solution is by itself the great compromise.
Basically, it is a lot of cuts.
Palestinians have been ready to make compromises.
The question is -- what is Israel insisting on compromising?

JZ: So we out of time.
We had a bit of a delay in the beginning, but when we come back, we will go to a pollster John Zogby.
He would discuss his new book and the result of his latest polls.
Stay with us.

Jim Zogby: Welcome back.
My next guest is John Zogby, president and CEO of Zogby International, a leading public opinion and market research firm.
He is one of the most successful predictors and trend spotters in the field.
He is the author of a new book, and random House published it.
"The Way We Will Be: the Zogby Report and the Transformation of the American Dream." The book is about the changes that are taking place in America and about the future trends.
It's sort of looks at where we are now and tries to see where we are going to be. I would actually like to start with -- as you see it, where we are. And then look at how we got here.
You talk about what defines us as Americans being the common values we share.
None of them, essentially, is our sense of freedom, our sense of people of rights.
Talk to me a little bit more about what that means, as you see it.

John Zogby: You go back to the immigrant experience, the colonial experience.
Certainly, there were those who came for economic reasons.
There have been refugees over the years, but what America came to define right from the beginning was liberation, the option to improve a new world and a world that was based not on being locked into a social class by a feudal tradition, but actually by coming here, and you know, you are on your own.
It is you and the elements, you in your community.
While hardly a perfect society, even from the early days, but certainly right up until now, we have just been defined by an attitude, not by cuisine, not by anything else like other countries might be, but it is what the Statue of Liberty represents.
It is liberation, freedom, and so on.

Jim: That is the backdrop.
How has it been transformed?

John: How is it being transformed?
What has happened is we have been able to turn in American history from a notion of freedom to a notion of an empire built on freedom.
That is how we settle from East Coast to West coast.
Then in the 20th-century, America becomes a colossus, a behemoth.
Then, it becomes a force to define freedom and fought in force freedom in the rest of the world, and there is a backlash.
In addition to that, it is very much a country that took advantage of the technological transformations of the Industrial Revolution and was very much a bill to ban on expanding -- very much built on expanding its economic empire.
Just in the past few years, we have reached a point where the Empire has run out.
It has reached its limits, and the American people, beginning in the 1970's, but certainly now, have transformed into recognizing that we live in a world of limits.
We live in a world where we cannot dictate and define everything.
We cannot control our own lives and our needs.
People are beginning to back off.
When they say that they do not want to just keep up this rat race or they have not achieved or even fallen back work, and are now saying that there has got to be more to life.

Jim: One thing seen in the book is the issue of economic constraints causing a redefinition, and you described the scene at a pizza place in your home town.
Neighborhoods transform, jobs transform, but people sidling into not looking backward with regret, but looking forward with kind of an acceptance and a changed definition of who they are -- describe that a little bit.

John: 27% of U.S. adults are working at a job where the place pays less than the previous job.
When I first began to track this, that was the angry white voter, it you remember.
What were they angry about?
They were slipping, falling backward.
What were they saying?
They were saying that they wanted to restore what has been, wanted to get back to where they work.
Now, here we are a decade and a half later.
We are not going to get back to where we work.
If we are not going to do that, we make the most out of what we have, so we shot at “Costco”, and advertisers have to win this -- do not sell fantasy.
Do not sell the lottery.
So instead … where you are and where people are right now and actually where there are going to be.

Jim: I read this issue up -- when I read about advertisers, I paid attention to the themes, and they are different than the ones we grew up with.
They are catching on.
They understand that there are always places to look.
Frankly, there is a new reality.

John: Whether it is the middle ages or the “Baby Boomer” generation, more and more, people are saying that they are going to retire, but there are going to retire from their jobs, and then they probably have 30 more years of their life to go.
They want to do something that Israel that fulfills their lives.
30 years as a long time ago.

Jim: That was another thing.
There is a couple here that I wanted to talk about.
Looking inward away from material goals, you see that as a trend.

John: It is day today, and it has been growing.
Since 1998, when I started pulling on the American dream, I wanted to know how people decided.
I have seen the number steadily growing of those who say it is not about obtaining material goods.
It is not what we grow what was or what we have learned about, that America is the desire to acquire, whether it is the suburbs, house with a small lawn in front of it or in back, but instead now, of boards of -- and upwards of 40%, are consistently telling as the American dream is about living a fulfilling life.
It is something spiritual.
Then, you see the behavior shift that takes place with that attitude, and you say that it is here, very real.

Jim: One thing you talked about in the book, a senior talk about is this class – a theme you talk about is this quest for authenticity.
Mother Teresa rates highest.
And it tells the story of her dad, a real story about a real guy, and you look at the presidential candidates now.
Again, the quest for the guy who has the real story.
Isn't that interesting?
-- A guy who has the real story.

John: Isn't that intriguing?
I finished the book a year ago, and it is fun to watch the presidential campaign turn out this way.
Like or dislike either of the candidates, the Republicans clearly nominated the most authentic person with the authentic, heroic story.
The real man.
The Democrats as well nominated their guide.
Maybe it is because of the lack of experience that comes off authentic and real.
But we did this pullback in the late 1990's for a vote -- for "FORBES" magazine, and they're wondering how they define authentic.
In various categories, we gave them lists of people.
What stuck out, and I mentioned it in the book, is that in every single case, they chose a person of color.
Bill Cosby was the most authentic dad, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Mother Teresa, Albanian, but she sure was not Pope John Paul II.
The last issue of the four dynamics you describe is the diversity question.

Jim: I remember you saying one time when John McCain went down to South Carolina in 2000, he said: “It is not your granddaddy's South Carolina anymore. In fact, it is not your granddaddy's America anymore.”
I remember when there was a demonstration for broke Obama, and there were young kids carrying signs that said race does not matter.
I was with an African-American friend from the Jackson campaign who was mad.
He said it does matter.
And it occurred to me, knowing that generation, knowing my kids, knowing the data in your book, for them, it does not.

John: No.
These young groups of people, 18 to 29-year-old with passports, take a completely different world view.
These are the kids who have seen the integrated television ads and images and magazines.
More importantly, they are likely to answer yes to the question "have you been to a party of someone -- a somewhat African-American?
Have you had a supervisor who is African-American?
This is a different world for them, and you add to that the Internet, and you add to that the fact that many of them have traveled abroad, and all you have to do is just leave this country and realize that the majority of the world is African and Asian and so on.
It does not matter to a lot of white kids.
Barack Obama is not the African-American candidate to them.
He is a cool guy.

Jim: The discussion is a leading its way right through the themes that I wanted to talk about, just in perfect sequence.
I now want to put up on the screen as four demographic groups that you outlined.
What is interesting is that the transformations that are taking place are not uniform, but felt differently on different levels.
You have these four groups, the new global to our 30 to 43 at this point.
Woodstock generation, 44 to 62.
And a private generation, you call it, from 63 to 72, and above.
Talk, if you would -- let's start with the private generation and go backwards, and describe each of their characteristics.

John: We start with the height of the Cold War in the and the greatest generation in the sense that they have grown up with a sense of patriotism, a sense of older community, but also, they are either parents or at least adults already by the time the 1960's happen.
In many instances, the 1960's kind of passed them by.
There are -- they are private generation in the sense that they are not the greatest, and they are now us, the baby boomers, the loudest.
What they have done over the years is simply played by the rules, lived their lives, and they appreciate, really, an older America.
On the other hand, they are on the verge of heroism because they were the first generation that is going to have close to 1 million of them who live to be the age of 100, which means they are going to pave the way and teach us about post-retirement.
So already -- and I did not coin the term -- they have moved and are moving from Earn-work to Vol-work -- volunteer work.
They are the mentors, the tutors, the hospital volunteers.
They are the ones who are beginning to go to remote places like Africa and Latin America and do good things.
Added John McCain's generation.
The next one, the Woodstockers.
I was there.
I'm on the cusp between private and the others.
You have always told me it is all about me, and that is the downside of us.
I was at Woodstock, and I was absolutely appalled by it, and that is where I came up with the team.
It was all about ME, and all about me and my needs.
We are the ones that created the need for L'Oreal just for Men and trying to look like the next generation.
A lot has been made out of the Woodstock generation, but it is time for a second act.
I wrote about this when Hillary --

Jim: What intrigues me about this presidential contest is that it was the first time in a number of years that we will not have a “Woodstocker” running, and I think our generation has forfeited the right to govern because we have handled it so badly, but let's go to the next crowd, the Nike generation.
These are the kids who grew up with one third of families ending in divorce.
These are the kids that came into the world at the time of Watergate.
In short order, this is a group that grew up without a sense of powerful institutions, and they have spent and are spending their adult lives trying to rebuild and put these institutions back together again, but their model is "just do a."
-- Their motto is "JUST DO IT."
There are no rules.
As this group reaches its 30's and 40's, they are now looking to put it back together again.
Not a second act, but really a first act in their lives.
We'll talk about the new global, but listeners, I want you to pay attention to the book because what you are going to see next December rather stunning numbers that I pulled out from the book from the hard data that actually shows really visually have different these generations will be.
Let's look first at the issue of environment.
We will put those numbers up.
This is the first question that we are going to put up on the screen.
It says, do you use less energy because of your concern with carbon emissions?
65 percent of 18 to 27-year-olds say yes.
When you get to the older generation, more than 50 percent say they do not, and it is not an issue at all.
But go to the next, quickly put them up together because they go to get there.
Do you believe that alternative fuels -- wind power, solar power, etc. -- can help create thousands of new jobs?

John: Strongly agree, the new global, 52%.
Of those 62 and older, 30.
81 and older, 19.
They do not even believe in alternative energy sources.
There is a different -- almost a world view.
Younger kids by PRIUSES, an older do not see the need for it.
Let's lay it on the line.
18 to 29-year-old are still 18 to 29-year notes.
There are still concerned with relationships, careers, self, but there is clearly another mine said.
It is a sense of living in a world that is larger than my community.
What number that is not up here, the percentage of these first global that say they are a citizen of the earth before they are a citizen of the United States.
This sense of patriotism means that they do not litter, that they save the earth, as opposed to fight and die in some power plant.
You mention the word litter, and there have been skeptics on some of my teams.
They say that the American people are not ready, just like the 1970's to the 1980's.
If gas prices were to go down, we are back to buying SUVs, HUMMERS, AND THE ANSWER IS NO because of this younger generation, but also because -- when I first started pulling, I was pulling in small communities.
Some of the jobs I took had to do with those very issues.
All skeptics say you are never going to get people to recycle.
People recycle.
They said he would never get people to stop living.
Remember when we would drive along the highway out in the country, and you would see a station wagon in front of your role window down and shoot a pack of groceries out on the highway?
It does not happen anymore.

Jim: What is interesting is in many ways, it has been driven by our kids.
If I do litter or did litter -- I do not any more -- but if I did not recycle, when we go on family vacations, my kids are furious with me.
It has become the defining issue for their sense of responsibility… Do we take care a planet Earth?
But let's look at this other one.
This is a question of patriotism.
I think it is intriguing.
The question is big issues being made in America -- is being made in America important to you when you buy a product?
27, 39.
49 percent when it is 69 and older.
59 percent, it is.
What does that say?
We are living in a bid to depend world.
Apparently, a younger audience does not care.

John: It does not care.
"Advertising Age" just did a piece on this a month ago actually getting more deeply into it and interviewing.
It really does not.
In fact, we were talking to the U.S. Olympics Committee about this very issue.
How do you build patriotism among young people?
The answer is you do not.
You build up the Olympics in the sense that it is a global competition that America as part of.
If you are going to try to sell to young people, do not sell them on patriotism.
It does not work.
Chevy tries to sell trucks by "This is my Country."
It bombed with the Silverado.

Jim: Here is another one.
The expression "my country -- right or wrong."
We grew up with that.
Do you not support that?
Among 18-27, 63 disagree with the concept. When you get to the 42-80 Group, 43% agree with it. In other words, they disagree with the fact that it is something that they could not support.
Inverted in concept, but you get the picture.
18 to 27 will not buy that “my country right a wrong thing”.
Similarly, and other questions to ask about America as a superpower imposing itself behaving unilaterally, younger people much less opposed to that -- much more opposed to that.
Older people feel positive. “Yes, why not, we have the strength, we ought to use”.
Those are a variety of questions.
We have also done polls on immigration and so on. This is just a different generation.
While we are looking at 18 to 29-year-old, what is really driving them is the subset of that group that have passports.
42 percent that have passports, and that was really eight or nine.
We have a screen on passports, which I thought was interesting.
Not passports, but do they travel overseas?
Have they traveled overseas?
If you travel overseas, having trouble overseas one or two times or three to five times. People of between 18 and 24 have traveled almost twice as often overseas as people 55 and older.

John: Is it that we have been indulgent with the or that they want to stretch out more?
What would account for that?
The world is out there, and they want to see it.
I went to the dry cleaners the other day, and the young woman behind a counter, who is probably earning minimum wage, said she cannot wait until it shut down because she was going to Trinidad.
I do not know how she affords it.
I do not know how a lot of young people afford it, but there are ways of doing it, and that is what they want to do.
And they do not want to visit relatives in Iowa.
They want to see the world because it is there, and feeling part of the world and feeling responsible to the world has helped create this transformation of the identity.

Jim: It is a tectonic shift that is taking place.

John: When I speak to groups, and you know that I'm out there all the time, I see people nodding their heads, particularly when it comes to their kids.

Jim: One last item, one last board that I want to put up, it is a concept you have developed here.
The secular materialist vs. the traditional materialist and the numbers you're breaking out by age, too.
Keep that up a little bit because I want John to define what a traditional materialist is and what a secular spiritualist is.
You will see that and the kids are more inclined toward spiritualism, older people more decline in terms of their value being acquisition of goods.
Just define the term better why we are looking at the screen.

John: Traditional material is really represented in the traditional American dream which does not mean selfishness.
It means the drive to acquire some material gain, whether for some it is well, or for others, is a good life and a life in the suburbs, but it was a dominant theme.
You can make the case especially among these verticals and among young people that perhaps a lot of those needs have been taken care of, and they are moving on to the next phase, and that next phase is to live a genuine life and live a full life.

Jim: Could this also be a contraction issue of the economy and the fact that there is no joy?

John: When you talk to young people, they are worried, but they are not consumed with their career.
That Nike generation -- we remember it so well.
They were going to college to get a good job.
You do not hear that as much from young people.
They are going to college now to expand their horizons.

Jim: I want to shift gears now into the presidential contest and look at that.
In terms of this analysis, you have, as you said, not just two distinct generations running, but two distinct authentic definitions of what it means to be an American running.
John McCain, who is a patriot, is the son grandson of an admiral.
And then, the son of a canyon and a working-class cans in -- KANSAN who live in Indonesia and worked his way through law school and then ended up working in community, organizing among the unemployed.
Two very different images, but both real.
How do the demographic groups break out in terms of who finds that?
Hillary Clinton ran on the basis of only she could win the white working class.
Is the white working-class the decisive element, or are there other constituencies out there that we may not have paid attention to?

John: You know the answer because I have written about it.
The white working class does not define this election.
Number one, at age.
About 20 percent of the electorate is over 65.
Heavily with McCain, for a lot of reasons.
About 20 percent of the electorate is 18 to 29, heavily with Barack Obama.
They are equal.
If for some reason Obama is able to generate even more enthusiasm among young people that they grow one or two percentage points, that is to his advantage.
That is one aspect.
Second aspect, the power of the Hispanic vote this year.
Hispanics were four percent of 92 million voters in 1992.
We project about 130 million to 135 million voters in 2008, 10.5 percent of whom are Hispanic, talking about more than doubling the Hispanic vote between 1992 and 2008.
This year is heavily a Democrat y ear and not Republican.
However, Republicans have managed to nominate the best possible candidate to appeal to that growing Hispanic vote, taking the issue of immigration, to a great degree, off the table, but John McCain has got to win a significant share of the Hispanic vote, meeting 35% to 38% of it.

Jim: Let's look at two boards about pulling.
I want to disclose the discussion out there if we could.
This is John McCain, Barack Obama, head to head, 47-40; someone else keep an eye on that 3 and 10 number because when you put Bob Barr and Ralph Nader in the mix, Barack Obama goes down about 0.7.
McCain also goes down significantly.
Nader and Barr pick up, and not sure what it says about where it is.
Other just drops one point.
Is McCain losing TO Barr and Nader?
In all the polling I have seen, Barack Obama never goes above high 40's.
McCain never goes above 40% 41%?
Is that his ceiling?
Is this not an election where somebody gets 60%, a suite?

John: It could break that way in the end.
Like the 1980 elections, but the important thing to watch about these numbers is that 10 percent.
It is a high number, for now.
Is late July.
10 percent undecided.
At this point in time, two well known candidates.
Also important to watch the Bob Barr factor.
Those are conservatives.
They have got to go home to McCain.

Jim: John Zogby, a great pollster about politics but not a great pollster and understanding of the American dream.
I think this book is one worth getting.
Take a look right now.
John will be in a city near you talking about the book.
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