READING THE TEA LEAVES June 18, 1998 The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer Transcript

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Less than five months from election day, the mid-term congressional races are beginning to take shape. Three veteran political reporters and pollster Andy Kohut examine the issues that could shape the upcoming election.

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A RealAudio version of this segment is available. NEWSHOUR LINKS: June 17, 1998: Two Senators discuss the death of the tobacco bill. June 10, 1998: The debate over the tobacco legislation bill. June 3, 1998: A report on California primary. June 1, 1998: The role of money in California's governor's race. May 21, 1998 Should tobacco companies be liable for a maximum of $8 billion in any one year? May 19, 1998 Republicans make last minute changes to the new tobacco legislation. April 8, 1998 The tobacco industry withdraws its support for the Congressional tobacco legislation. March 12, 1998 President Clinton endorses the bipartisan tobacco proposal. January 29, 1998 Steven Goldstone, the CEO of RJR Nabisco, acknowledges the health risk of tobacco products. Browse the NewsHour's coverage of Congress.

JIM LEHRER: Now a mid-year look at the '98 election cycle, including fallout, if any, from the tobacco bill debate. It comes from three veteran political reporters: David Broder of the Washington Post; Ron Brownstein of U.S. News & World Report; and Elizabeth Arnold of National Public Radio, plus pollster Andy Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.

What impact will the death of tobacco legislation have this fall?

Elizabeth, first, how do you read the political impact of the tobacco issue so far?

ELIZABETH ARNOLD, National Public Radio: Well, Jim, I heard all the threats on the Senate floor about retaliation in the fall, but I'd say in the last 18 primaries there hasn't been much evidence that tobacco is upper most in the voters' minds, and the public wasn't that sure that this really was going to curb teenage smoking thanks in large part to the tobacco industry's advertising campaign. But I would say that challengers could make an issue out of an incumbent who takes tobacco contributions and then voted against this bill. They have to make that connection. They can't just say this said Republican is interested in keeping teenagers on cigarettes. They have to make the connection that this particular Republican or incumbent is more interested in getting money from RJ Reynolds than he is in curbing teenage smoking.

JIM LEHRER: Ron, would you agree that it has to be raised by a specific candidate against another candidate, or it isn't going to work?

RON BROWNSTEIN, U.S. News & World Report: Well, I think I agree with Elizabeth, that it's not likely to have much impact as a stand-alone issue in the sense that nothing this year is really having a lot of impact as a stand alone issue. What may be more important is it's part of a larger critique or argument that each side wants to make. I think Democrats very much want to run against a do-nothing Congress, and this would be the centerpiece of the argument that Republicans are sort of systematically swatting away all of these ideas on education and child care, health care, tobacco, that President Clinton came up with earlier this year. And on the other hand, Republicans, I think, are looking toward a fall with a very tax-focused message. They are, you know, resisting the tobacco tax, they're hoping to pass a big tax cut that they expect President Clinton to veto, and they are also talking about, although unlikely to go fully ahead in the Senate with sun setting the tax code, itself, so tobacco may fit into a broader message, but on its own I agree with Elizabeth, I think it's going to be very difficult to turn many races on this or any other one issue this year.

JIM LEHRER: David, how do you read it?

DAVID BRODER, Washington Post: Listening to a couple of Republican consultants today, Jim, I think there is perhaps a little bit more nervousness on the Republican side, particularly on the House side, than you would get from the comments of the Republican Senate leadership. They're concerned that the tobacco issue in conjunction with another issue, which is the so-called patient's bill of rights in managed care programs, which also may be shunted off in this Congress without action, put those two things together, and particularly in suburban districts, Republicans are concerned that for those suburban women, who are a target group for the Democrats, could make the case that the Republican Party controlling congress is not responding to people's health concerns. And health is still a big issue.

JIM LEHRER: What about the tax point that Ron made?

DAVID BRODER: The tax point I think is a mitigating factor, and it's why I think on the Democratic side they don't see the tobacco issue as being as productive for them as potentially this health care and patient's rights issue is.

RON BROWNSTEIN: And they do tie together, because I think what Democrats want to be able to say in the fall is Republicans said no on a whole series of bread and butter issues, because they're beholden to special interests, and that is sort of why they want to fuse all of this together, and that will be the argument in many House races.

How is tobacco legislation and health care coverage playing?

JIM LEHRER: Yes. Andy Kohut, you've done some polling on this. What do the voters tell you about what their concerns are, particularly starting with tobacco, where does it rate?

ANDREW KOHUT, Pew Research Center: Well, tobacco doesn't come up when we ask people to name the issues that are most concerned to them. People say education; they say Social Security. They say cutting taxes, but when we say, is this personally important to you that something be done about this, 48 percent say yes, but, number one is the HMO legislation that David Broder was referring to. 60 percent say that's personally important to me. If there is a hot button—if there is a single hot button issue, it is HMO regulation. People are scared to death about benefits being cut back dealing with managed care.

JIM LEHRER: But on tobacco you all had to raise it. They didn't raise it, right?

ANDREW KOHUT: That's exactly right. We all—we had to raise it, but the public says by a two to one margin they sided with the government, which the government is not very popular, and when we asked about Microsoft, the Microsoft debate, the public largely said it was Microsoft, not the government, so this is an issue where the public wants to see the government come in and do something, and there are some risks for Republicans. There's probably some wiggle room, because the public has some reservations about specific aspects of this bill. They worry about letting the tobacco companies off on the liability issue. They think that some aspects of it, on the other hand, aren't fair to the tobacco companies. So it's not a poison pill, if you will, for the Republicans, but they do run some risks.

Andy Kohut: "Education is number one. It's the number one issue. It's been that way two years running."

JIM LEHRER: Elizabeth, what has your reporting shown on this HMO issue? Would you agree on Ron and David in this and also with Andy's polling?

ELIZABETH ARNOLD: I would. It's right up there with education. It is one that you have to raise yourself, though. Education, for me, in traveling around the last six months is the one that comes up, which is traditionally usually comes up with the economy, with crime, but now education is first and foremost.

JIM LEHRER: How does it come up? What do they say? I mean, what do they say about education?

ELIZABETH ARNOLD: This is what they say, Jim. They say the economy is great. Things are booming. I should feel good about my situation. But I looked down the street and my kids' school there are portable classrooms. I'm not happy with the class size. It's specifically looking at their kids' school and saying this isn't in sync with the rest of society.

JIM LEHRER: Andy, do your polls reflect that?

ANDREW KOHUT: Absolutely. Education is number one. It's the number one issue. It's been that way two years running. When we do our January survey and we ask the public for the president and the congressional agenda, they say they rate education above all else.

JIM LEHRER: And they say that as a federal issue. That's the president and the congress that needs something to do about that.

ANDREW KOHUT: The public warrants action, and they think that Washington should do something about it. Remember how the public screamed about the prospects of killing the Department of Education two or three, or four years—three years ago.

Turning an education into a national issue.

JIM LEHRER: Yes. But David, how does that work politically? How does a candidate take the education issue, let's say in this upcoming election, running for the House, and make that work, whether you're a Republican or a Democrat?

DAVID BRODER: I think it's difficult. The Republicans have a specific proposal, which Clinton has vetoed and will continue to veto about school vouchers and school choice. And that issue is defined, but I don't think that's where most of the voters are at this point. They're looking for ways to get help for their kids' present school, not to get them into another school. The Democrats, I think, have one real problem, which is that most people know at a common sense level that if anything is really going to be done about schools, it's going to be done in the local community, or at the state level, not in Washington.

RON BROWNSTEIN: You know, what's really intriguing to me about this debate is the difference between the approach of the Republican gubernatorial candidates and Republican governors, and the Congress. If you look at what the governors are doing and running on this year, whether it's Pete Wilson of California or George W. Bush in Texas, or George Pataki in New York, it's an agenda extremely similar, almost overlapping President Clinton's at the national level, reducing class sizes, building more schools, ending social promotion, expanding charter schools, more early childhood intervention. And they're sort of pursuing a sort of convergent strategy where they go out and they say, yes, let's reform education, but in many cases we'll put more money into it. They're trying to cover their bases, cover their flanks on both sides. At the national level the GOP is pursuing, I think, a much more polarized strategy on education and really on most issues where they are rejecting out of hand the entire agenda that Clinton put out, and they're coming forward with ideas like vouchers like the educational savings account, the so-called Coverdell approach, that they know he is going to veto. In effect, they are steering towards stalemate, rather than what the governors are trying to do, which is bring a coalition together by attaching together Republican and Democratic ideas, very different approach to this mid-term election and sort of a very different read in the mood of the voters.

Is lower interest leading to lower turnout?

JIM LEHRER: Andy, speaking of the mid-term election in more general terms, what do your polls show about just what the interest is in these things?

ANDREW KOHUT: Well, we have a very different mood of America than we had four years ago. There's less interest in what's going on in Washington and less interest in politics, and there's less anger, there's less desire to change, and both of those things point to lower turnout. We found four years ago almost half of Americans say they follow government and politics and public affairs most of the time. Now it's only about 36 percent. And that bears out our monthly news interest index trend over the past three years. We also find fewer voters saying they strongly feel we need new faces in Washington. Both of these things bode reasonably well for the Republicans. The Republicans will be advantaged by a pro-incumbency sentiment. People largely want to see their incumbents re-elected, and they will also be advantaged by lower turnout. Lower turnout helps Republicans generally, and it seems to be very much the case in 1998.

JIM LEHRER: Elizabeth, you've been going around the country. How would you measure the interest in this election, in the primaries, thus far, the primary still to come, and the election generally?

ELIZABETH ARNOLD: Well, turnout has been low, and that's typical for a mid-term election year. It's been compounded by the good economy. But I wouldn't go so far to say that voters are apathetic. In the Oregon primary a few weeks ago—there's a new elected position called Superintendent of Public Instruction—16 people ran for that position. I don't think that that's—I think what's going on is voters are looking for a different way to participate, a more effective way to participate, and they used to be mad at Washington. Now they don't really expect that much from Washington, and they're looking locally. There's great interest in city council races and sheriffs' races and races like superintendent of public instruction.

JIM LEHRER: Yes. Go ahead, Andy.

ANDREW KOHUT: But if we look at the primaries that have been held so far, there have been nine primaries that had both gubernatorial and Senate races. Four years ago those primaries averaged a participation rate of 22 percent, as they did in 1990. It was 18 percent in 1998. So far, this lower interest is, indeed, translating into fewer votes. And if we were to apply that to the 36 or 37 percent who normally vote in mid-term, we could get them real close to 30 percent, only 30 percent of American voters voting. Now it's too early to—people haven't figured this one out. They haven't thought about what they're going to do on the first Tuesday in November, but the early signs are not good.

JIM LEHRER: How do you read the signs?

DAVID BRODER: I think both Andy and Elizabeth are right in terms of this driving the current situation. There's one other thing that we need to mention as a reason for people being turned off in Washington. They think the press in Washington is preoccupied with scandal stories, and they're sick of it, and they have an accurate sense that not much else is really being done here. But the caution I would have is that if we'd been having this discussion four years ago, I don't think any of us would have been smart enough to see the Republican sweep that, in fact, developed. My great friend and mentor, the late Jim Roe, used to caution me, David, there is always a trend. Sometimes you see it early; sometimes you see it late. I'm not sure that in the end we won't see that there is something moving up there.

JIM LEHRER: What do you want to add to that?

RON BROWNSTEIN: Well, the only trend—the interesting trend that's out there, beside—there's a difference between low interest because people are angry and cynical and turned off from Washington and low interest because they're basically feeling better about the direction of the country than they have really at any time for a sustained period in the last 20 years or so, and what you saw in the California race, I think it's quite revealing—

JIM LEHRER: The governor—

RON BROWNSTEIN: the governor's race—where Al Checchi, the businessman, spent $40 million basically saying send me to Sacramento to turn this place upside down and to really shake it up and to make big bold change, and he was beaten by a candidate who—a professional politician, a career politician—I mean, the ultimate opprobrium—Gray Davis, who said, look, I can make—you know, I can tinker here and there and I can make this thing work a little better, but we're moving in the right direction and we don't need that kind of fundamental change. I think that's a message that we're probably going to hear more of in the fall and people will be less afraid to talk about having—being part of the political system because the political system is producing somewhat better results on a whole series of questions.

JIM LEHRER: Okay. Elizabeth, gentlemen, thank you all very much.

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