|
|
 | |
 |  |
| SHIELDS AND BROOKS | |
 December 26, 2003  | |
|
Syndicated
columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks discuss the Democratic
candidates, President Bush's approval rating, the war in Iraq and the biggest
political surprises of 2003.
|
|
MARGARET WARNER: Now, our end-of- week-- and in this case, end-of- the-year-- analysis of Shields and Brooks. That's syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks. Well, David, at the end of this extraordinary year, where has it left -- let's take President Bush, first. Where has it left President Bush politically? | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 2003 and the political future of President Bush | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
DAVID BROOKS: Politically he is doing pretty well. I think if you look at his approval ratings, the Gallup Poll has him at about 63. The New York Times poll has him at 58. That's pretty good. That gets you reelected. I think if you trajectory out for the next year, he would probably be reelected. MARGARET WARNER: What is it about this past year that has brought him there? DAVID BROOKS: There's two things. First of all, the economy is surging. That's a big thing. It took a long time for the economy to turn around and secondly Iraq. There was no political upside to Iraq for him. He was reasonably high. People really trusted him on the war on terror, but there was an incredible downside. And while certainly things have not gone the way he planned or as well as he expected, they have not gone terribly. So if you look at public approval of Iraq, there is still a bare and significant majority saying we did the right thing and they're still basically supporting him. That was not a given. He could have really suffered a cataclysmic loss if things had gotten much worse than they are in Iraq. MARGARET WARNER: How do you assess it, Mark? Do you think Iraq, on balance, was a political winner for him? MARK SHIELDS: I think the jury is very much out. Last month it wasn't. This month it is. What's the difference? The difference is, as David pointed out, improving economic news, one. But second, the capture of Saddam Hussein gave him a lift. The trip to Iraq for Thanksgiving gave him a lift in the polls and the Libyan news of Gadhafi.
MARGARET WARNER: Do you think that's because of the economy, or at least a perception that while the market is up so the economy is improving? MARK SHIELDS: I think Iraq is more determinant than the economy. I really do, in this case, for the president because I think his presidency is tied to it, Margaret. It defines him. As David points out, it was his choice. It was his war. He has identified with it. There was no public cry for it. So he made the case for it. And if it doesn't work out, and a period in the fall it looked like it wasn't working out, it cost him politically. DAVID BROOKS: It is kind of interesting, though, because I sort of agree that Iraq really is the core issue for the Bush presidency. But if you ask the voters, they say it's the economy. I don't know who is right about that. I'd say the voters. |
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The Democratic Party in 2003 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
MARGARET WARNER: All right. Let's talk now about the Democrats' shift first of all in their presidential pre-positioning. Now this preprimary year, the out of power party doesn't get a lot of attention to its pre-primary skirmishing, but the Democrats have gotten a lot. Would you say they're better positioned now than you might have expected a year ago or not? DAVID BROOKS: No. I think they're much worse positioned. I mean, I think what has happened in the Democratic Party has been extraordinary. We've basically had a revolution. You had the Washington establishment of the party, and by that I mean Tom Daschle, Nancy Pelosi, Dick Gephardt up overturned.
MARGARET WARNER: Do you see it that way, Mark, really a significant year for them? MARK SHIELDS: A significant year, Margaret, but every presidential election involving an incumbent is a referendum in the election. That's reflected in the Democratic fight. You have to understand this about George W. Bush. There's an analysis done by Tom Gallagher, the political and economic analyst -- and he points out that going back over the entire history, George W. Bush is less popular with members of the opposition party than any president in history -- less popular with Democrats than Bill Clinton was with Republicans. MARGARET WARNER: So hugely polarizing.
|
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The effectiveness of a Republican Congress | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
MARGARET WARNER: All right. Now the Republicans in Congress. David, this is the first full year of the Bush presidency that they've controlled both houses of Congress, both houses on Capitol Hill, a new leader in the Senate Bill Frist. How did they do? DAVID BROOKS: I think they behaved like a majority party. I'm struck less with the ideology of the party that when you are in the majority, you have the incentive of the power of the purse, which you control, to buy votes. They did that with Medicare and a series of bills. You look at education spending; you look at spending on the unemployed. If you looked at their policy positions, you would not have predicted that spending on all these domestic issues would have skyrocketed as it has. Yet, they do it because we have got the power of the purse, let's spend money to please people to reelect us. I think it's, you know, it is where you stand that determines how you act a lot more sometimes than the beliefs you come into office with. MARK SHIELDS: Margaret, it took the Democrats 40 years in control of Capitol Hill to become as arrogant as the Republicans have in a very short time, irrespective of their product. And I don't disagree with David on the product. I mean, I think it was very effective to triangulate on the issue of Medicare. But there was no ideological or philosophical underpinning of this. It was a great entitlement.
MARGARET WARNER: All right. Now how do you think the Democrats did in opposition? MARK SHIELDS: I don't think the Democrats did much of anything in opposition. I think the Democrats have not recovered from the election of 2002. The Democrats went into that election trying to submerge the differences between themselves and President Bush and for the fear of being accused of being soft on terrorism. They were accused of being soft on terrorism and they lost the election of 2002 and the minority party with no recourse, they don't have a single galvanizing idea like the Republicans did in '78 with Kemp-Roth. So all you can do in the minority is try to stop and obstruct what you think are the worst ideas. MARGARET WARNER: How would you read --
|
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Political surprises of 2003 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
MARGARET WARNER: Two quick final questions. A political development this year that none of us would have expected, that certainly you didn't expect that came as a real surprise. DAVID BROOKS: Well, we all thought Gary Coleman would run for governor of California. John Edwards I thought in my wisdom would be the leading Democratic candidate because I think he's the strongest Democratic candidate for swing voters, and that didn't turn out to be quite right. MARK SHIELDS: I'm amazed that there has been absolutely no accountability for the debacle and the tragedy of post-war Iraqi policy. Nobody stepped forward -- that there is no sense of outrage, I mean whether Halliburton, go back to the Truman Committee in War World II, everything was bipartisan, totally both sides of the aisle. MARGARET WARNER: You honestly thought there would be...
MARGARET WARNER: You mentioned Gary Coleman of California. Wouldn't you say the demise of Gray Davis and the rise of Arnold Schwarzenegger, none of us would have predicted this a year ago? DAVID BROOKS: Sure. That's part of what I think is the de-politicalization of the electorate. As the parties get more polarized, a lot of people want something fresh and you get a guy like Schwarzenegger. MARGARET WARNER: Any other surprises? MARK SHIELDS: Any other surprises? MARGARET WARNER: How about Howard Dean's surge we went back and read a few… MARK SHIELDS: Howard Dean was an enormous surprise -- that somebody could merge as an underdog, as a dark horse, and become the principal fund-raiser and do it all in small contributions -- you can honestly say owing nothing to the large traditional interests in either party. It is an amazing achievement and coupled with that leading in the polls coming from nowhere, it's an accomplishment of historical proportions. MARGARET WARNER: We did go back and read a few Shields and Brooks conversations, including the anchors and a year ago none of us were talking about Howard Dean.
MARGARET WARNER: We're going to save this clip. Happy New Year to you both. MARK SHIELDS: Happy New Year to you. |
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
        |
|
| Support the kind of journalism done by the NewsHour...Become a member of your local PBS station. | ||
| ||
| PBS Online Privacy Policy Copyright ©1996- MacNeil/Lehrer Productions. All Rights Reserved. | ||
| ||
There
are only two numbers that matter at this point, you know, regardless
of George Bush's job rating. They are how do you feel the country is
headed, in the right direction or seriously out on the wrong track?
Those have improved for the president. A month ago when he was down
in the polls and battling and had an un-approval for the first time
in his job rating of his presidency the people felt the country was
heading into the wrong direction. Now by a slight majority they think
it's heading in the right direction. 
You
have Howard Dean, this guy who first attacks their character by saying
they're not strong enough or gutsy enough to take on George Bush. Then
he attacks their power base, which is the fund-raising and organizational
structure, by building another. And he has emerged out of nowhere and
run, largely not on ... well partly on contempt for Bush but also quite
largely on contempt for the Washington Democratic establishment and
they have not fought back. So this has been the event of the year as
far as I'm concerned politically -- the complete revolution within the
Democratic Party. 
MARK
SHIELDS: Measurably -- measurably less popular with Democrats than was
Ronald Reagan or Richard Nixon, both of whom won landslides. This is
one reason why many people think there is no chance of a landslide in
2004 because George Bush has a ceiling. I say that because Democrats
who really felt that way, that Bush's policies were objectionable and
offensive did not have anybody in Washington speaking for them. They
saw the Washington establishment, David, as criticized as being complicit,
complacent, and compliant. And finally it was a constituency looking
for a candidate that Howard Dean came to represent.
The
reality is that feelings have never been more raw on Capitol Hill than
they are right now; the sense that conference committees between the
two houses no longer exist. They're railroaded through; that you keep
roll call votes open for five hours until you browbeat some poor retiring
guy over the head to the point where he is going to vote or be threatened
with the loss of his pension or something. It's really reached that
point. I think, you know, with the bitter harvest that will be reaped
from what has been sowed by the essential tactics of Tom Delay and the
House I think are ugly but it's George Bush's party. George Bush is
the face of this party. And it's his record, and the sense he did get
what he wanted out of this Congress. 
DAVID
BROOKS: I think the Democrats have committed political suicide. I think
in the 1990s they had a solution, a formula for winning elections. This
was the third way formula that Tony Blair and Bill Clinton came up with.
It was for middle class tax cuts, it was moderate but religious on values;
it was for free trade. And this was like a quarterback with a pass pattern
that works every single time. The defense doesn't know what to do about
it but they gave it up. They walked away from that strategy. And it's
mystifying to Republicans why they would walk away but they have walked
away and they walked away in part because some of the things Mark has
talked about, which is the polarization of both parties. I'm not sure
it is all Bush and DeLay's fault. I think the country has just become
polarized. It is become much harder for either party to be a third way
centrist party.
MARK
SHIELDS: I thought there would be a sense of what went wrong. I mean,
why isn't anybody held accountable? I guess complicating that is probably
the fact that the vice president of the United States has become a totally
reclusive defensive figure because of Halliburton, because of other
matters. He talks only to the friendliest of press people, I mean the
most reliable, and very, very rarely, and essentially goes to fund-raisers.
He does nothing publicly. 
DAVID
BROOKS: Who would have thought the party was on the verge of committing
suicide? You can replay that in a year.