SHIELDS AND BROOKS

	January 20, 2004
	Jim Lehrer speaks with syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks about the changing dynamics of the Democratic presidential race.

JIM LEHRER: And to syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks. Your explanation, Mr. Brooks of what happened; why did John Kerry do so well and why did he surprise so many people in doing so? DAVID BROOKS: He didn't surprise Mark and I. I think we predicted it exactly last Friday on the NewsHour. JIM LEHRER: Mark? DAVID BROOKS: I think the Democratic Party revealed itself. There was a theory, the Howard Dean theory which was this was a party that was angry at the Washington Democrats that wanted to punish everybody who voted for the original Iraq war resolution, that was infused with rage. But the Democratic Party and the people of Iowa who came to the caucuses are not like that at all. What they long for, I think, is a return to 1960s early optimism, an idea that politics has possibilities and they wanted a sense of balance. John Kerry offered experience, balance, old-fashioned political virtues which, you know, don't seem ... seem a little out of tune in the Internet age but what is what people actually wanted. JIM LEHRER: Do you agree with that, Mark? MARK SHIELDS: I don't disagree with it, Jim. I'd say that the electability factor really propelled both Edwards and Kerry especially in the last week. JIM LEHRER: Electability meaning they can beat George W. Bush. MARK SHIELDS: That's right. JIM LEHRER: They believe that they can. MARK SHIELDS: And I don't argue with David's vision of how the Democrats would like to see the world. They see the principal obstacle to that -- George W. Bush and his removal being imperative. In the final analysis when they made that decision, it was seven out of ten who felt that electability was an important decision, voted for either Kerry or Edwards. So I mean that was ... that really said to me, you know, that their appeal was a very practical one in that sense. JIM LEHRER: Now, the Edwards thing. The conventional wisdom among you pundits is that the reason he did well is that he was upbeat rather than downbeat. He didn't attack anybody. Do you read that, the same... DAVID BROOKS: Partly. First of all, I don't think the candidates ran this. There's this whole theory that Joe Trippi, the Dean campaign manager, and all these back room geniuses are manipulating public opinion. They're not that smart. The public is what moved. The candidates basically stayed the same. What John Edwards had going for him is first of all he's the best campaigner I've seen since Bill Clinton. His speech is the most fantastic stump speech. I followed it around four or five times just because it's so much fun. JIM LEHRER: You heard him say the same thing over and over again. DAVID BROOKS: You see the crowds. They go crazy. JIM LEHRER: What does he say; what is the guts of it? DAVID BROOKS: The best moment in the speech. He's talking about himself as a trial lawyer. He said I was this little trial lawyer and went up against the corporate interests, the corporate lawyers, the best money can buy, dignified people. You can hear them thinking Republicans. Then he says and they looked at me and said what's this guy doing in the courtroom with us? We're the best and the brightest. Then he turns to the crowd and says, you know I beat them and I beat them and I beat them and I beat them and the crowd is going crazy because they know this is the guy who can beat the corporate Republicans. It's a fantastic, it's the best moment. And that's just ... he's just a fantastic ... the Republican wants to get overconfidence cure, go to a John Edwards rally. JIM LEHRER: What's your reading -- MARK SHIELDS: John Edwards has perfect pitch as a candidate. Last night in Des Moines, his speech was so much better than anybody else's. I mean, exempting Dick Gephardt who lost and left the race but certainly better than John Kerry's, which was endless. I mean it was too senatorial. It might have been three pretty good eight-minute speeches. It was a pretty mediocre 25-minute speech. Howard Dean's rather animated... JIM LEHRER: We'll talk about him in a minute. MARK SHIELDS: But John Edwards stood up there. First of all he acknowledged Gephardt in a beautiful way. He said Dick Gephardt got up everyday of his life and fought for working families. Tonight we have to lift him up and honor him. If you were a Gephardt sympathizer, it was just the perfect moment. The others made a bow and a deference to him. It was just a perfect pitch. Then he went on and instead of talking to the room as the others did to some degree, he talked about exactly what David was talking about. He talked about the two Americas, one for the privileged. JIM LEHRER: The thing like in our excerpt. MARK SHIELDS: I have to tell you I agree with David, that is awfully good. But he also has a sense of the possibility of America when he says they told me at every turn that I couldn't do it. They told me that I couldn't go to college. They told me I couldn't be a lawyer. They told me I couldn't ... I'm sure people have told you that in your lives that you weren't qualified for something. You see the heads nod in the room. And David's right. I mean I think he's better than Bill Clinton. I really do. JIM LEHRER: Wow. As a campaigner? MARK SHIELDS: Now he has not faced the adversity Bill Clinton faced in 1992 with Gennifer Flowers and the draft thing because he has not been on the receiving end. That's been one of the great advantages for him thus far. JIM LEHRER: Howard Dean. What happened? DAVID BROOKS: Unattractive and unelectable. How much deeper do you need to go? I think the guy, there was a moment where he was attacked or questioned by an elderly gentleman who questioned him. He said, "You should show a little neighborliness, why aren't you nicer to George W. Bush?" and Dean said, "George Bush is not my neighbor." I saw that news clip in New Hampshire and then again in Iowa. I think there's a divide in the candidates. Howard Dean says not only am I against Bush but I detest Bush. He's not my neighbor. He's not part of the same country as me. The other candidates say that George Bush is someone who needs to be removed from office. He's terrible for this country but I don't really hate him. They don't exude that hatred and that air of menace which Dean does. You know, in his eye-popping performance to the victory speech he gave after his defeat last night, what it showed was someone who loves the passion of the moment. That strikes people as a little dangerous. I think that's essentially why he lost half his support that he once had in Iowa. MARK SHIELDS: Howard Dean said something last night that was absolutely true. If someone had said six months ago, nine months ago that he was going to be one of the three tickets out of Iowa, there's only three tickets out of Iowa, that he would finish third, they would have said you're crazy. He was an asterisk. We've never had anybody have happen what happened to Howard Dean this year. He went from the asterisk to the covers of news magazines. JIM LEHRER: He was everywhere. MARK SHIELDS: To being the favorite, the strong overwhelming favorite, the consensus of the political class and all the rest that he was going to.... JIM LEHRER: Brought out Gore and Bradley and everybody was standing in line. MARK SHIELDS: Absolutely. I think, Jim, that was one of the problems. I think his message as being different, being the outsider and he didn't really have a second act beyond "I was the one against the war." He didn't take that to the next level as to what we ought to do -- I mean whether, in fact, it ought to be, you know, that we ought to internationalize it. Take that credibility, that legitimacy that credential he had. Once he started trotting out Al Gore and Tom Harkin and Bill Bradley and it just seemed that, you know, this was the guy who was the outsider. He was different. But he was getting these conventional endorsements it seemed every day. JIM LEHRER: Do you agree with David's point that he also said, the difference between running against George W. Bush and hating George W. Bush. MARK SHIELDS: I don't think that's ... I mean, I did not sense that in Dean. I mean, I sensed in Dean that he lost his message the last week-and-a-half. I mean, this is a guy who really did take a battering, take a punch. JIM LEHRER: They really went after him. MARK SHIELDS: They went after him. The press went after him. JIM LEHRER: We talked about it every Friday night. MARK SHIELDS: The candidates went after him. It really was. So he got into this shootout with Dick Gephardt. I mean if you ask why John Edwards did so well, I mean, John Edwards was the positive candidate. He said, "Hey, look, while those guys are over there playing demolition derby politics, I'm a decent guy. I'm the family sedan. You can get in my car and won't run into that sort of stuff." JIM LEHRER: Where do things stand as things now began a week from ... well, for New Hampshire which is of course a week from tonight or a week from today… DAVID BROOKS: I don't know. You wanted that answer. I will say this to explain why I don't know. If you go back to four years ago, Bradley versus Gore, people did not switch candidates very much. McCain versus Bush. People pretty much picked their side. I think. JIM LEHRER: And stayed with them. DAVID BROOKS: And stayed with them because fundamentally those were real differences between those two sets of candidates. Here you see people switching by the minute. Two days ago, the day before the Iowa caucus the majority of Iowa caucus voters said they were still opening to change especially between Edwards and Kerry -- a tremendous overlap. So I think as we go to New Hampshire we're going to see the same incredible volatility which makes even me scared to predict. JIM LEHRER: Where do Lieberman and Clark come into this now, or do they? MARK SHIELDS: I think the results last night were probably the worst for both of them in this sense, Jim. If you're Wesley Clark and he used his time very well in New Hampshire. He had gone up in the polls and developed some real support. What you wanted out of Iowa was you wanted Howard Dean coming in. You wanted to be Horatio at the bridge. I can stop Howard Dean. I'm electable. I've got the national security credentials. I'm a Southerner. What's he get instead? He gets John Kerry with the national security credentials and John Edwards who is a Southerner. JIM LEHRER: He's got a problem. MARK SHIELDS: His two credentials. Joe Lieberman when he had it to himself with Wesley Clark, Wesley Clark busted him in New Hampshire. It's really going to be a tough uphill slog for, I think for Lieberman. I thought Dean today was an antidote to the speech he should have given last night. If I were Howard Dean what I'd do is I'd take a day off and figure out why I want to be president, not talk about the Internet, not talk about contributors, not talk about volunteers and just make a speech at the state capital and say these are the three reasons I want to be president of the United States and why I can do it better than everybody else. JIM LEHRER: But there's no question, is there, David, that both Kerry and Edwards were going to be helped in some way in New Hampshire by what happened last night in Iowa? DAVID BROOKS: Well, we thought organization mattered. We thought money mattered. I don't know what matters except I do know talent matters. People who are good as campaigners who have a message, that matters. Those two have a message. Dean has a message. We shouldn't count him out by any means and Clark is very good. So there are four good candidates. It's a very strong field I think. MARK SHIELDS: David is right there, Jim. Don't count Howard Dean out of this race by any means but remember this. After Iowa and New Hampshire, this is the end of retail politics. This is the end of the time the candidates talk to real voters in church halls, at church suppers. JIM LEHRER: Move into the state as the Liebermans did. MARK SHIELDS: That's right. From now on, after New Hampshire, Jim, it's all wholesale. It's what they see here. JIM LEHRER: Three or four states at a time. MARK SHIELDS: And on TV and purchased time. That's why these two states are so crucial to forming the landscape on which this election will be run.