Q&A with Michael Steele

Before former Republican National Committee Chariman Michael Steele spoke in Alumni Hall, an Indiana Daily Student reporter sat down to speak with him about this year’s election and other issues.

IDS What’s going on in Washington, D.C., that shouldn’t be, or what’s not happening in Washington that should be to turn this cycle around?
Michael Steele The what’s going on is obvious — nothing. The what should be going on is the members of Congress, including the president, doing the nation’s business.

The people need to ask themselves some fundamental questions about the leadership that is currently running the country, starting with its inability to find any semblance of thread to get along, any opportunity to actually cobble together our nation’s budget so that our fiscal house can begin to realign and order itself. ...

What’s not being done is an honest discussion about the nation’s immigration policy, an honest discussion about the nation’s health care policy.

IDS It looks like Mitt Romney has secured the nomination as the Republican presidential candidate for the 2012 election. What is the biggest challenge he faces going into the general election?
Steele He has a lot of big challenges, starting out with he has a base that still hasn’t warmed to him. Follow that with the fact that over the last three, four months he’s engaged in a level of ugliness with his counterpart that just have been grist for the mill for the Democrats.

I’ve seen some of the commercials that are going to be coming out this fall, and it is going to be ugly, brutal. He’s got the challenge of 527s that McCain and his predecessors did not have to acknowledge in terms of fundraising.

So he’s got a lot of challenges, but having said that, the interesting thing about Romney that I think will do him well is that he is one of the most steadfast politicians I’ve seen.

IDS What does Romney need to do to reach young people and inspire them to get out and vote for him in November?
Steele Obama did, and he was able to do that, and it was fresh.

The problem is, over the last four years from that moment, not much happened.

So that energy sort of dissipated. So that, to me, is a real opening for someone like Romney to come in and talk about their future, the future of young voters, in a way that brings them into the conversation.

Right now, decisions are being made that are going to impact everything you do, from how much money you make to where you live to what you can afford to buy and pay for, so a lot of decisions that Washington and the next president will make will have a large impact on the 18-year-old that is voting for the first time in 2012, not even to mention those who are a little bit further down the pipe.

So making that argument is going to be important. He has to find his own way to connect with an 18-year-old voter, not with fear but with a sense of promised expectation.

I think young people are ready for that conversation ... Obama’s got to try to find that spark again, and Romney’s got to find it for the first time.

IDS What would you say to students now who are maybe feeling a little disheartened by the current political atmosphere?
Steele Obama was the light that came on that attracted you to this playground.

But just because you don’t see the light as brightly as you once did, or the light might not even be there for you, doesn’t mean you get off the playground.

You’re here now, so claim your space, move freely in it and make sure that that spirit of what has defined the country isn’t lost, because if you give up, guess what the future looks like — it ain’t pretty.

And so we can have our political debates, we can have our discussions, we can have our disagreements, but when we’re all said and done, if we can’t fall back on the thing that defines us — American — then we’re in a lot of trouble.
 
And what an American means to me is someone who pushes the envelope and doesn’t ask for permission and doesn’t have an age limit.