|
|
 | SECOND PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE: REACTIONShields and Gigot Analyze the DebatesOCTOBER 16, 1996TRANSCRIPT |
|---|
After the final debate between the major party candidates for the 1996 Presidential election, Mark Shields and Paul Gigot analyzed the performance of Dole and Clinton.
MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated Columnist: Well, first of all, Elizabeth, we went through three hours of presidential debates between Bill Clinton and Bob Dole and never once was the word "sacrifice" mentioned, uh, by either candidate. It just tells us how much our politics, our political dialogue has changed since presidential debates became a staple of our, our national political life. There was no sense of duty on the part of citizens. It was all what's going to be yours and how, how we're going to do it better and cheaper. I did think the first part of tonight's debate that Sen. Dole came out. He had an obvious game plan, was to define who ought to be President, rather than what this race was about, and to make it a contest between two individuals. And he continued to return to the character question repeatedly. And I was surprised the President never went for the bait. He let the charges kind of just lie there. He never really responded, and then at one--I thought about halfway through the, the President seem to get off the defensive and became a little bit more aggressive and seemed to hit his stride. But--and I thought that Sen. Dole--quite frankly, neither man, in essence, really answered the central charge against him. I thought Sen. Dole fumbled the age question, and I thought President Clinton never adequately objected--responded to or addressed the character question.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Paul, what are your general impressions?
PAUL GIGOT, Wall Street Journal: Well, I think the format of a town hall format with citizens plays to Clinton's strengths more than it does to Dole because Clinton has that ability to react to people in their face. He seems to draw energy from them. He sees the empathy President. He has more empathy than a convention of funeral directors. I mean, he can just--he can just feel your pain, and he does that very well. Bob Dole has a harder time reacting. That--Dole started strong. He was particularly good going after the character question at the beginning. He seemed to have a game plan. I thought he lost some of his focus on that as the debate went along. There was a time when, for example, he tried to introduce the Indonesian donations to the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign but he did it a kind off-handed way that mentioned Indonesia. I bet you half the audience doesn't know where Indonesia is, much less that its people in that country have been giving money to the campaign. So I thought he didn't score--if he came in thinking I need to emphasize two things--taxes and trust--he did a lot better by taxes than he did I think scoring on trust.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Do you think that he should have taken a stronger line on character issues in the way that he did in his speech yesterday?
PAUL GIGOT: Well, if you're Bob Dole or any candidate, you have to do it in a way that makes you comfortable with it personally. I think Dole felt a lot more comfortable doing it in a speech where all the arguments are laid out where he knows what he's going to say and where he's not afraid of going over the line and going too far in a way that sets up Clinton. And I think that that's what he was frightened about, and that's why he didn't really take the gloves off all the way, as some of his advisers had hoped he would. If Bill Bennett had been in Bob Dole's place tonight, I can tell you there would have been a lot more arguments, very tough points about character.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Mark, what do you think about that?
MARK SHIELDS: About the character, I think--
ELIABETH FARNSWORTH: Yes. And should the gloves have been off a little more?
MARK SHIELDS: Well, I have to think because the President was so restrained, so controlled in his response to the charges that he was operating on a strategic premise himself that those attacks would hurt, would hurt the attacker, in this case Sen. Dole. I don't know how that will play out, but I think that Sen. Dole is not comfortable in a frontal attack, in a bombastic attack. I think that he raised the issue very well and effectively in the early part of the debate, and he was trying to obviously elicit a response from Bill Clinton, and Bill Clinton never engaged Bob Dole on that. And I thought when he did come back, he obviously had his answer, which I think was an effective one. It didn't come, really in context in the debate, which was no attack ever created a job or educated a child, no insult ever cleaned up a toxic waste dump, uh, and probably that will be one of the lasting sound bites out of tonight's, tonight's event.
PAUL GIGOT: Well, (abortion) didn't come up as a question, but he didn't bring it up, and, in particular, he missed the opportunity of partial birth abortion veto that the President had which is a big issue with conservatives. He did mention the voluntary school prayer issue which will resonate with a lot of voters. And I thought he was quite good on--unlike Bob Shrum--on affirmative action. I thought the President gave two answers on affirmative action. He's for it, and he's against it. And Bob Dole did try to nail him, and pin him down. But I want to say something else that I was struck with in this debate tonight. Uh, Bob Dole two or three times defended the Republican Congress when a lot of Republicans have been afraid he wouldn't. And he warned about the Democratic control of both the Congress and the White House. Bill Clinton, despite a 15-point lead, and despite its clearly running out the clock strategy, never once said if we have a Democratic Congress, we can do an awful lot for this country. He never once put his own lead and his own position on the line for that kind of request, and I think that that may come back to haunt him if, in fact, Republicans hold a Congress next time.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Mark Shields, do you think that will haunt Bill Clinton?
MARK SHIELDS: I don't know if it will haunt him. I think Bill Clinton understands that the American people have a sense of checks and balances not only constitutionally but politically. When asked the question in the “Wall Street Journal's” own poll, they would prefer to have a Democratic President and a Republican Congress and particularly with a sense that things have worked pretty well these last three or four months, a partisan--partisan appeal might not have been helpful. I was reminded in watching and looking at Bill Kristol's knockout punch that Bruce Babbitt, the former Arizona governor in 1988, Democratic presidential candidate, observed once that presidential debates are like the pandas meeting at the zoo, that they enter with great expectations, uh, there's tremendous fuss and commotion, uh, but there's never any real result. And I don't think that race was dramatically changed by tonight's events, although I think that Sen. Dole did do better and won the first half.
ELIZABETH. FARNSWORTH: Well, Mark and Paul, thank you very much. And that's it for this special edition of the NewsHour. We'll see you online and here again tomorrow evening at our regular time with more reaction to tonight's event. I'm Elizabeth Farnsworth. Thank you and good night.
| |||||
 | |||||
| |||||
|
|
| |||
| |||||
| |||||
| Support the kind of journalism done by the NewsHour...Become a member of your local PBS station. | |||||
