Author of "Globalization and the Poor," Mandle is an expert in economic policy and treasurer of Democracy Matters, a national college campus-based organization focused on campaign finance reform.  Mandle argues that elections in a democracy can and should be treated as a public good, analogous to the way national security is considered.  All should pay for elections through the public sector because no set of individuals or groups should be permitted disproportionately to benefit from them.  Mandle's commitment to the issue of money in politics is evident in his regular monthly editorial, Money On My Mind, appearing on the Democracy Matters website, www.democracymatters.org. 

"President Clinton's eventual admission of his White House affair with Monica Lewinsky helped change the political landscape," Dr. Kraynak, a Republican now leaning toward supporting Mr. Romney, told Newsday for a recent article.

"There is a way that Clinton softened up public opinion in a way that makes Giuliani possible.  People are genuinely not sure if the office of the presidency is supposed to be a results-oriented job or a moral authority," Dr. Kraynak said.  "Different periods in our history, we value one more than the other." 

Though ordinarily hidden from public view, most of the legislative work of the U.S. House of Representatives takes place in its committees.  There the political battles are fought and the technical decisions made before a bill emerges for a final vote by the full House.  Most of the important issues of the day -- global warming, homeland security, energy policy, health care reform, international trade -- are complex enough that many committees are in a position to influence policy, each with its own parochial concerns.

Carrie Keating
Professor of Psychology
Colgate University
Office: 315/228-7355
Home: 315-345-9055
E-mail: ckeating@mail.colgate.edu
Expertise: Keating focuses on the elusive quality of charisma by investigating the skills and traits associated with social dominance and leadership. She also studies facial structure and form of the presidential candidates and how we perceive such traits as trustworthiness, strength, weakness, intellectually superiority, and charisma, to name a few. Together with colleagues and student collaborators, she has discovered that humans convey dominance through facial expressions akin to those of other primates; that facial features which make people appear powerful also make them seem untrustworthy; that people who are socially powerful have unusually good acting skills; and that persuasive performances begin with kidding oneself. Her studies of dominance and deception have been featured in the print, radio, and broadcast media outlets in the U.S. and abroad, including PBS’s Scientific American Frontiers, Dateline NBC, Discovery Magazine, The McLaughlin Group, McLaughlin One-On-One, The Oprah Winfrey Show, and The Learning Channel.

Spencer Kelly
Assistant Professor of Psychology
Colgate University
Office: 315/228-7350 
Home: 315/824-8206
E-mail: skelly@mail.colgate.edu
Expertise:  Kelly applies his research -- on the role of hand gestures in producing language-- to politicians and public figures from around the world.  From President Bush’s palm movements to Saddam Hussein’s pointing, Kelly can analyze the possible meanings and functions of the hand gestures we repeatedly see in the media. “Gesture, and other forms of visual communication, are tightly integrated with our understanding of language,” he said.  “Gesture may represent one of the earliest forms of communication in the evolution of language.”  Kelly has been quoted by numerous media outlets worldwide, including Danish public television, Radio 3 in Hong Kong, the Orlando Sentinel, the New York Times, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

But, Schaller explains, the changing demographics of the Midwest and Southwest offer a combination of issues important to the middle class - including jobs, immigration and the environment - that give the Democrats their best shot to regain the White House.  The GOP can't win without the South, Schaller says, but they also can't win with the South alone.

Schaller is a columnist for the Baltimore Sun and has appeared in various regional and national media including The Nation, Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report," The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Salon, Slate, and the American Prospect, C-SPAN and NPR.

Quoting Schaller: "The dramatic economic, social and political changes of the past half century can be neither rewound nor ignored. The old "three-party" model of regional American partisanship -- with northern and southern Democrats outvoting western Republicans -- is now defunct, replaced by a new three-party model that pairs southern and western Republicans against urban-based Democrats of the Northeast, Midwest, and Pacific Coast states. Simply put, the South is no longer the "swing" region in American politics: It has swung to the Republicans."

McNulty notes that the formula to reliably convert enthusiasm among younger people into votes has not yet been found.  They don't turn out at high rates, nor do they vote as reliably Democratic as they're assumed to, although they do lean slightly more Democratic than the general populace.  "Mostly, they vote like their parents...but less often," said McNulty.  McNulty points out that although Barack Obama seems to be the 'campus' candidate in this cycle, he does not appear to be counting on it.  "To indulge in pure speculation, perhaps since Obama is from a generation too young to have been immersed in the cauldron of Vietnam and Watergate, he sees the youth vote with clearer eyes," said McNulty.

He is co-author of Millennials Talk Politics: A Study of College Students Political Engagement, and author of Television Consumption and Civic Engagement Among 15- to 25-Year-Olds. Both studies were released by the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement where he served as an intern. The reports are available for download at www.civicyouth.org.

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