Tucker Carlson wows at MFA Forum

Tucker Carlson rocked the audience of top AEC firm leaders with his assessment of the coming presidential election, as well as some of the ancillary hijinks he encounters as a political journalist for Fox News, at the Opening Keynote of the Matheson Financial Advisors M&A Forum in Chicago Wednesday night. The key takeaway from Carlson's talk - during which he frequently went off page and offered his no-holds-barred view of the candidates and the parties - was that President Obama's seemingly insurmountable advantage in the his battle for re-election has been whittled away by numerous missteps and misfortunes.

According to Carlson, the Republicans are primed to do something that, in his words, is never done - defeat a sitting president who faced no primary challenge from his own party. The problem, says Carlson, is that Obama's greatest weakness is the univeral health care plan he passed, but Obama's opponent, Mitt Romney, is the only other person out of 312 million Americans that has signed a law requiring people to pay for health insurance (i.e., the individual mandate).

Carlson is withholding any prognostication about the election until October. He says that whichever candidate is the lead story in the major newspapers the first week of October will lose. "If the headlines are about Obama, then it's a referendum on his presidency, and he will lose," Carlson said. Conversely, if the main topic is Romney, then Obama will be re-elected.

Attendees from both sides of the political aisle said after the talk that they found Carlson engaging and entertaining, and that they walked away learning something new about Washington, the political process and the upcoming election.

Today's program begins at 8 am (Central) with a keynote from Peter Knipe, CFO of STV, Inc., who will speak on "STV - An ESOP Story." We'll check back later with a summary of his talk.