For longtime CBS news anchor Dan Rather, the current administration has failed to make good on campaign promises. “[President] Obama over-promised and under-delivered,” he said at a Friday panel event in Lohrfink Auditorium.

Rather, who now manages a TV newsmagazine on HD Net, said Americans, faced with an economy in limbo, expect their leaders to “address it boldly and address it with some audacity.”

The event provided a forum for prominent political minds to discuss the results of last week’s midterm elections.

Other members of the panel included Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), former Clinton Chief of Staff Harold Ickes, Sky News political editor Adam Boulton, Chicago Sun-Times Washington Bureau Chief Lynn Sweet, Arab-American Institute President James Zogby and Henry Olsen, vice president of the National Research Initiative. Washington insider and adjunct professor in Georgetown’s department of German and European studies Jon-Christopher Bua moderated the discussion, which attempted to separate reality from political spin to come away with an honest assessment of America’s political future.

In her introductory comments, SFS Dean Carol Lancaster reminded audience members that the American people are at a critical juncture in the history of American politics, at which the elected leaders must decide whether to capitalize on partisan tensions or come together to achieve progress on common objectives.

The panelists addressed the implications of Americans voting against the president’s party, a trend that has marked the last three midterm elections. In response to his peers who characterized the pattern as a reflection of the big government/small government debate that has defined partisan politics for decades, Ickes said that people are not concerned with the size of the government, but rather with what results it can produce for them.

The economic difficulties suffered by Americans have led to what Zogby calls “irrational” patterns in their voting behavior. “People are now in a position where they’re seeking change so desperately that they’re willing to vote against their own economic interests in order to achieve it,” he said.

Another hot topic of discussion revolved around the panel’s consensus on whether the Republican Party’s victory in these latest elections was short-lived. Panelists debated whether or not bipartisanship would be necessary in the next two years if conservatives hoped to maintain a majority in the House or recapture the presidency. Ickes said that the same dramatic shift in public opinion that resulted in such a massive turnover in this election could just as easily result in a Republican defeat in 2012.

“Republicans have a very short lifespan here,” said Ickes, who went on to explain that if the economy continues to worsen, voters will blame conservative leadership just as readily as they recently turned on their Democratic counterparts. Panel attendee and member of Georgetown University College Democrats Jake Sticka (COL ’13) reacted positively to Ickes’ assessment.

“As a Democrat, it was heartening to hear so many individuals with great political knowledge say that the recent Republican victory was a temporary one,” he said.

While panelists put a damper on conservatives’ post-election euphoria, they were also quick to address the failings of the Democratic Party that led to last week’s shift – the most significant partisan turnover since the 1930s. Despite his victory in Tuesday’s elections, Kucinich was the most vehement critic of his party’s actions over the past two years. “We blew it, plain and simple. We had a chance to summon a New Deal-type exuberance and we failed,” Kucinich said.

At one point, Kucinich became so animated in his frustration that Rather jokingly cautioned the Congressman to tone it down, reminding him, “We are at a Jesuit institution here, Dennis.”

Olsen also urged his colleagues not to take this conservative turn too lightly, reminding them that many of the seats lost belonged to members in areas with longstanding liberal voting records, most notably, 18-term Rep. James Oberstar (D-Minn.). A statistician by trade, Olsen encouraged liberals to cater to the white working class in 2012, as the majority of seats lost were those held by rural, southern “blue dog” Democrats.

Ultimately, the panelists reflected that while a conservative majority in the House may make it more difficult for the Obama administration to govern, the Democrats will have it easier politically. With the new split in congressional power, panel members said, any public dissatisfaction with politics on Capitol Hill will no longer reflect negatively on just Democrats.

The event was sponsored through the collaborative efforts of the BMW Center for German and European Studies and the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service.