Ep. 414 — Susan Page

The Axe Files with David Axelrod

CNN

News

4.6 • 7.7K Ratings

🗓️ 22 October 2020

⏱️ 67 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

As a high school senior facing college applications, Susan Page had a choice to make. Should she follow her passion for playing the oboe and go to music school? Or should she allow her love of journalism to guide her? In the end, journalism won, and Susan soon found herself away from her home state of Kansas for the first time as a freshman at Northwestern University. Now the Washington Bureau Chief for USA Today, Susan has covered six administrations and 11 presidential elections. She spoke with David about how the media can rebuild public trust, what it’s like to cover the most powerful politicians in the country and her recent experience as moderator of the 2020 vice presidential debate.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Music
0:06.0	And now, from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN Audio, the Axe Files, with your host, David Axelrod.
0:20.0	Susan Page has covered 11 national campaigns and six presidents for USA Today and News Day.
0:26.0	One of the most thoughtful journalists in Washington, she also moderated the recent Vice Presidential debate in the middle of this tumultuous campaign.
0:33.0	I sat down with her yesterday to talk about that experience, the state of play 12 days out, and her own journey from Kansas to the top ranks of America's political journalists.
0:43.0	Here's that conversation.
0:47.0	Susan Page, great to see you.
0:56.0	You are a master of debates now.
1:02.0	A survivor of debates, a master of debates.
1:05.0	Most people may hear this podcast after the final presidential debate tomorrow night, but we're talking the day before.
1:14.0	One general question I was thinking today, probably 45 million people will have voted by the time these two men step on the stage tomorrow night.
1:23.0	We're 12 days out, polls say virtually everyone has made up their minds, a small sliver of people haven't.
1:31.0	How much does this last debate matter?
1:36.0	There are reasons to think it doesn't matter very much given these record number of people who have already cast their ballots and given that the number of undecided or persuadable voters in America has got to be just vanishingly small.
1:48.0	On the other hand, it's the biggest event we've got left.
1:50.0	So if anything is going to make a difference, it is this final debate and important both for how President Trump behaves, I think that first debate cost him something.
2:01.0	And also how Vice President Biden does.
2:04.0	There are some voters have some questions about his age or his ideology and so it's a chance for him to make a closing statement as well.
2:14.0	But you're right at this point in a campaign, especially with this campaign, most of it is cooked.
2:22.0	I woke up this morning thinking who are the people who haven't decided?
2:26.0	They're low information voters and probably the least likely voters to be tuning into a presidential debate.
2:34.0	Now they may get sort of coverage of or slivers up or through digital media, some section of the debate but not very likely.
	...

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