Charlie Cook on Obama and Why McCain Couldn't Win

By Maria Bartiromo

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Chris Usher

Ten months ago when I talked with political analyst Charlie Cook in this space, Hillary Clinton had just washed Barack Obama's face in the snows of New Hampshire, and the grueling race for the Democratic nomination had more miles to go than one of Todd Palin's snowmobile races. I talked with Charlie again on the day after Obama's smashing victory, and he conceded that he had initially been skeptical that the junior senator from Illinois could prevail. Cook, publisher of the online Cook Political Report, a writer for the National Journal, and one of the most respected media voices in Washington, now is "in awe" of the organization put together by the rookie Obama. But he also believes John McCain was in large measure defeated by opponents that never appeared at any of the debates: a financial market in free fall and a downright scary economy.

MARIA BARTIROMO

What's your reaction to Obama's victory?

CHARLIE COOK

It was momentous, historic, and all that, but the amazing thing was Obama winning historically Republican states like Florida and Indiana and Ohio and Virginia. And yet the House gains for Democrats were at the very, very low end of expectations, and the Senate gains were not quite as big as expected either. It was a bigger Obama win than it was a Democratic win. That suggests you may have had some new voters coming in and voting for Obama and then not sticking around to vote for other Democrats.

It does keep checks and balances in place, no?
What this means as far as governing is that Obama is going to have to hold on to conservative, moderate Democrats and reach out to moderate Republicans to move legislation. Temperamentally, I think that's probably his nature anyway, but it's a strategy of necessity now.

Some 63% of voters said the economy was issue No. 1. How does Obama restore confidence?
John Edwards liked to talk about two Americas. And, you know, one America is very excited and hopeful about what Obama may do. But there's a second America that is very, very fearful he is going to tax them into oblivion and that their whole lives will be different. He may never win over that latter group, but he does need to take steps to unite the country and make people accept him, if not approve of him. And the steps he makes in the next few weeks will be critical. For example, does he ask Robert Gates to stay on as Defense Secretary? Does he ask Republican Senator Richard Lugar, the former chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, to be Secretary of State? Does he come up with a strong economic team immediately and an aggressive program to put people back to work?

What's the smartest thing Obama did?
This is a guy who has been underestimated ever since he first got into the U.S. Senate race in the fall of 2002. But think about the millions of words that have come out of his mouth in the last two years, and yet only once--at a closed-door fund-raising reception in San Francisco--was there really a misstep. Even some of the top people from the Bush 2004 campaign marvel at how amazing this organizational effort was--the focus, the discipline, the lack of infighting and backbiting that you saw in the Clinton and McCain camps.

Are there management lessons to be learned here from his campaign?
The one thing that struck me was the loyalty from top to bottom. You never heard criticism of him from his people, and he was never critical of them. That's why his campaign had virtually no leaks and whatever infighting there was stayed behind closed doors. They did not air their laundry in public.

Politico.com says $5.3 billion was spent on this election. How significant was Obama's cash advantage?
Somebody said Obama spent roughly as much on ads as Geico spends in a year. Clearly having that advantage was important, but more important was the damage the economy inflicted on Republican chances.

Is the Red-Blue divide over? Looking at an electoral map, it seems alive and well.
Oh, it's alive and well. It just shifted around a little bit. Take Indiana, for example. It's a manufacturing-dependent state, so it's logical to think enormous economic fears affected the voting pattern. Places like Virginia are more about people moving in from other parts of the country and changing the complexion of the electorate.

How does Obama's margin of victory stack up?
Well, six points is a very, very healthy win, but it's not a landslide. Still, he was the first Democrat to get more than 51% since Lyndon Johnson in '64. I'm not sure that under the circumstances he could have won a landslide. The wind wasn't completely at his back. He was the first African American nominee, and he'd been in the Senate less than four years.

What was McCain's worst misstep?
You can second-guess the choice of Sarah Palin, yet it did energize the Republican Party and was sort of a B-12 shot for the McCain campaign. But any move McCain made pales in comparison with the impact of the credit markets seizing up and the stock market plummeting. When the financial markets went into a free fall, that created an environment that was just so toxic that McCain could have had five different running mates and run a completely different campaign and it wouldn't have made any difference. After mid-September, this was an unwinnable race.

Didn't McCain need to make people believe he had his hands around the economy?
Watching McCain was a bit like watching a ballplayer seven or eight years after their prime. In 2000, John McCain was at his optimal performance level. McCain 2.0 was more ideological and very different from the McCain we saw in 2000. He wasn't as effective a campaigner, and he tried to change his brand.

Maria Bartiromo is the anchor of CNBC's Closing Bell.