By NICK BUDD
Hays Post
Former White House Press Secretary Jay Carney spoke Monday at Fort Hays State University’s Sebelius Lecture Series in Hays the night before a crucial midterm election. He predicted what several media outlets have said along the campaign trail: Republicans will gain control of the Senate and pick up seats in the House. But according to Carney, that result is to be expected.
“The headlines you’ll see in the newspaper will read ‘Change in America’ or ‘GOP on the Rise,’ ” Carney said. “Here’s the thing you need to understand though: With three exceptions, the president’s party has lost seats in every midterm election for a century.”
Carney also said those presidents’ parties lost an average of six seats, the same number Republicans need to gain to take control of the Senate.
Before serving as Obama’s top media counsel from 2011 until June, Carney worked for Time magazine, where he got a first-hand view of some of the most notable world events — including the demise of the Soviet Union and the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. On 9/11, Carney was one of the few journalists aboard Air Force One with President George W. Bush.
On that fateful Tuesday in 2001, Carney was one of a few journalists who were rotated in and out of Air Force One. On 9/11, it was Carney’s turn to fly to Florida with Bush, who was scheduled to read and speak at an elementary school in Florida.
According to Carney, when the presidential motorcade pulled up to the school, some of the members of the motorcade heard that it was a “small plane, possibly a Cessna that slammed into the (World Trade Center).”
“Once Bush and other members of the motorcade entered the room, everybody’s phones started going off to let them know that the second tower had been hit,” Carney said. “That’s when we knew it wasn’t an accident.”
Once the events afterwards transpired, the group “rushed to the motorcade” and took off quickly on Air Force One “like a rocket.”
Carney also spoke of his time in the White House and his interactions with President Barack Obama.
“Working in the West Wing is like trying to stand up in a vortex,” Carney said. “The sheer volume of issues, the constant demand for reaction, the requirement that the president be proactive with his agenda … the heartbreak of meeting the families of the fallen along with some of the triumphs, that’s what it’s like working in the White House.”
Carney called Obama a father figure and spoke about the president’s short career in government before being elected in 2008.
“He wasn’t viewed as a potential president … before he entered the race,” Carney said. “He represented a break in tradition. … Shortly before his speech (at the Democratic National Convention) in Boston in 2004, he was still paying off his student loans and working two jobs … and that made him very easy to talk to.”