Shields, Brooks Consider Impact of Election Shakeups

David, first on the Democrats, how is the leaving of John Edwards likely to affect Barack Obama versus Hillary Clinton?

DAVID BROOKS, columnist, New York Times: Well, first, it was a bit of a surprise to a lot of us that he did decide to get out. There's a non-trivial chance there will be a brokered convention, that things may not be settled, and people thought he'd just rack up a bunch of delegates...

JIM LEHRER: There's been a lot of punditry about that.

DAVID BROOKS: There has been, not by me, thankfully.

JIM LEHRER: By you and Mark, right?

DAVID BROOKS: But the thought that he'd rack up delegates and become a power broker. But I think the titanic clash between the two -- and even today, it is becoming really a titanic clash between Clinton-Obama -- has sucked all the energy away from Edwards and even undermined some of the support he'd already gotten, some of the delegates he'd already gotten. So that was just wafting away.

And everybody is now guessing -- and it really is guessing -- who his voters will go to. And I'm cautioned in these guesses by the fact that when you look at the exit polls out of Florida on the Republican side, the Giuliani voters, their second choice was McCain, which you would not expect. I mean, their second choice was Romney.

The Huckabee voters, their second choice was McCain. You would also not expect that. So when you're asking people's second choices, you've got to be careful. People don't follow the predictable patterns.

JIM LEHRER: So, Mark, anything you want -- what is your guess? Do you have a guess as to how the leaving of Edwards is going to affect the Democrats?

MARK SHIELDS, syndicated columnist: Well, I think it comes down, Jim, to whether these Edwards voters follow either their demographic identity or sort of their attitudinal values.

That is, if you look at them, the demography of them, most of them should be Hillary Clinton voters. Hillary Clinton has been consistently winning older voters, white voters, and downscale economic voters. And those have been most of John Edwards' most loyal supporters.

At the same time, they have been voters who have endorsed or embraced the idea of change and shaking up Washington. And in that sense, they probably may be more comfortable with Barack Obama.

So I think it comes down to which way they tilt, whether they tilt by their identity or their attitudes.

JIM LEHRER: David, in a final analysis, why didn't it work for John Edwards this time?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, I do think he lacked the star quality of the two major things. The question could be, how did he get this far? And I do think he ran a reasonably good campaign.

And he seized an issue. He seized an issue of economic populism, which has infected the whole campaign and will linger on after he's gone. But I think fundamentally he lacked the star quality.

And this message of economic populism, while it has real passionate resonance with a minority of the Democratic Party, does not have the passionate resonance with the majority, even of the Democratic Party.

JIM LEHRER: What would you add to that, Mark?

MARK SHIELDS: Jim, I would say that John Edwards was ill-served by the economy. If, in fact, the economic pains and torment we're about to head into or are now experiencing had happened six months ago, I think John Edwards' message would have had greater saliency. And I think there's a greater chance that a similar message will be embraced if things do head further south in the economy.

And I think the strength of his message was seen by the fact that he's the one that set the tone on the national health. He was the trendsetter. He was the pacesetter. And the others did follow suit and on economic justice questions, as well.

So even though he didn't have the star quality -- I agree with David -- he did, in fact, have an influence on the debate and the dialogue of this campaign.

JIM LEHRER: OK.

RUDY GIULIANI (R), former mayor of New York: I have tremendous regard for John, have always had tremendous regard for John. I had wished throughout this campaign that, when the campaign is over, and said it oftentimes, that we really will still remain friends, no matter what happens.

And part of the consolation for me was the bitterness that comes about with losing is that wish has come true.

JIM LEHRER: And how important is that, David, the Giuliani endorsement of John McCain?

DAVID BROOKS: I don't think it's terribly important, to be honest. It is remarkable they remained friends. I thought that would never happen. I thought, in the heat of the campaign, that...

JIM LEHRER: They're both guys with sharp elbows.

DAVID BROOKS: They're tough guys. And you get in a competitive situation, and the friendship disappears. But in this case, they really didn't hit each other, and Giuliani never really went after McCain who was ahead of him by the end with any ferocity.

But as for a lingering effect, I think his supporters will probably drift one way or the other. But I don't think Giuliani has the deep purchase in the Republican Party the way, say, Ted Kennedy has in the Democratic Party. So I'm not sure this endorsement alone will really matter much.

And I don't think in general there's been a capitulation among the more extreme parts or the more conservative parts of the party toward McCain yet. That's going to take a few weeks, it seems.

JIM LEHRER: And an endorsement of Giuliani isn't going to help that, anyhow, is it?

DAVID BROOKS: Not completely, no.

JIM LEHRER: Because he was not considered even close to being the most conservative in the race, quite the contrary.

DAVID BROOKS: Right.

JIM LEHRER: All right.

MARK SHIELDS: Well, let me say this, Jim. First of all, I thought his departure, nothing became his campaign quite like it. He was quite gracious, quite generous, very upbeat.

He was a terrible candidate. The more he campaigned, the worse he did in every state. The more he spent, the lower his numbers went.

He was not particularly good at campaigning. He didn't seem very comfortable with people. He didn't seem to like them very much. There was an incredible hubris about his strategy, that they could somehow skip the retail states, where voters do matter and expect candidates to show up and ask for their votes and answer their questions of Iowa, New Hampshire, and elsewhere, and somehow jump in a month later.

And I'd add to that the fact that Rudy Giuliani -- Joe Biden said it in the Democratic debate, but there was a lot of truth to it -- in every sentence of Rudy Giuliani, there was one noun, one verb, and "9/11." And it didn't go much beyond that.

JIM LEHRER: A flawed strategy, David, or a flawed candidate, or both?

DAVID BROOKS: The strategy was doomed. You can't skip the first two and then expect to come back. But it was a flawed candidate.

And he was up -- remember, it's remarkable, when you think about it. Weeks ago, he was the national leader, and the national leader never wins anything in a primary? That doesn't happen very often.

And I think it wasn't because he's pro-choice, because he was up nationally for a year. People knew he was pro-choice. But as Mark suggested, his campaign was not only 9/11-focused, but it was backward-looking and it was about Rudy, it was not about the voter.

And it was about the past and not about the future. And those clichés about politics are essentially true.

He had when he talked about the future these 12 commitments, but they were vague generalities that any Republican could have said. There was never any specific message of what he was offering people, what his presidency would be like.

And you can do that on the lecture circuit, but you probably can't do it when you're running for president.