Shields and Brooks Weigh Primaries, Chance of Bloomberg Bid

And it was not a liberal riff, but it was a compassionate riff. And he had the best answer of the night, as he tends to.

And this was a question, when he was asked about his religious faith, an ad he signed about whether wives should submit to their husbands. And he said, "First, I live my faith," which got the crowd going with him. Then he said, "You should talk to my wife if you think she's submissive," and she clearly isn't. She's a very smart woman.

And then he said, "Actually, my reading of Ephesians is that marriage is not a 50-50 halfway thing. It's 100 percent commitment on the husband's part and 100 percent commitment on the wife's part." And that brought down the house.

And that, in our moment of -- I guess this is all about emotion and Oprah, this campaign -- that was a great moment. And so I'm continually reminded that Mike Huckabee has the potential to connect, I think, broader than what he's connected with so far.

MARK SHIELDS: I know Janet Huckabee. I visited with her Monday night in Rochester, New Hampshire. Believe me, she is not submissive to anybody. She is a strong, independent, forceful woman. And they are total partners in this thing.

JIM LEHRER: OK, just a little horse race here on Michigan. The conventional wisdom -- and we're always reluctant to discuss that here...

The conventional wisdom is that if Romney doesn't win in Michigan on Tuesday, he's had it. He's gone.

MARK SHIELDS: His own state chair in South Carolina, Senator Jim DeMint, said the only way he wins South Carolina is to win Michigan. If he doesn't win Michigan, it's over, because he won't win South Carolina. If you don't win those, you're not going to win.

He said himself he has to win Michigan. He expects to win Michigan.

JIM LEHRER: And the race for Romney is against McCain in Michigan, right?

DAVID BROOKS: Though Huckabee would have a chance. There are a serious number of evangelical Christians in parts of the state.

I actually differ. I think both these races -- we're used to, in the past couple of years, looking at the results of individual states. But it could be both these races will come down to delegates, in which case picking up a delegate here and there may cumulatively add up to something.

And it may not be stupid to think of candidates losing every single race, but if they pick up a few delegates here and there going in, going through.

MARK SHIELDS: I disagree. I don't think -- it's chemistry, not arithmetic.

JIM LEHRER: It's the states, you think?

MARK SHIELDS: I think, virtually at every stage, I think it is. I mean, if somebody gets on a roll, if McCain wins South Carolina and Michigan, he's going to be hard to stop.

DAVID BROOKS: I'm glad we disagree, because one of us is going to be right about something.

MARK SHIELDS: Absolutely right.

DAVID BROOKS: No, I don't think so. He has not done particularly well heretofore, but he is the most conventional conservative. And he is a plausible...

JIM LEHRER: Conventional? What do you mean by conventional conservative?

DAVID BROOKS: He is a traditional -- much more of the traditional Reagan conservative. Most importantly, he's a federalist. I think he believes in his bones that power should not be concentrated in Washington.

He believes that through thick and thin. And so you've got to respect him for that belief.

And then, on taxes and Reagan and a whole series of other things, he is a traditional Republican conservative, in a way, frankly, Huckabee and McCain and even Romney in his true self are not. And so if he's going to have a base, it's going to be in the South, and it's probably going to be a place like South Carolina.

JIM LEHRER: Was it your feeling when you talked about Thompson, Mark, that Thompson was really just rolling the dice last night? I mean, he was more aggressive. He knows that he's got to do it now or forget it?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, he was one of four senators who endorsed John McCain in 2000 for president. Chuck Hagel, Mike DeWine, he and Jon Kyl, McCain's home state colleague. And so there's a relationship there. There really is.

But I think Fred knows this is it. And if he's going to go out, he's going to go out, not with a whimper, but with a bang in South Carolina.

He only got 1 percent of the vote in New Hampshire. I mean, boy, that's a tough -- there's very little bounce coming out with 1 percent of New Hampshire.

DAVID BROOKS: Half and half. The governor of Arizona probably not. John Kerry, probably not.

JIM LEHRER: I forgot -- yes, right, John Kerry. Sorry, I forgot that.

DAVID BROOKS: A devastating blow to the Obama campaign getting the Kerry endorsement. That's more interesting for the psychodrama between Kerry and Edwards.

But the culinary workers matters, because Nevada is having their first primary. People don't know how to do it because they've never done it before. And so having an organization really will matter in that case. So I think that's a case where something really does matter.

The celebrity endorsements, this is a race that's unlike any other. And I've been thinking about why we're not always got everything perfectly right. And it is a race so much about race; it's so much about gender; it's about people's own personal stories, their own relation to their spouses.

A lot of personal stuff is overlapping. And so I think the judgments toward the candidates is much more personal and much, much, much less likely to be guided by political leaders.

JIM LEHRER: What about Kerry and Napolitano, Mark?

MARK SHIELDS: Endorsements, Jim, political, the higher the office, the less they mean.

JIM LEHRER: The higher the office...

MARK SHIELDS: For example, running for recorder of deeds, county recorder of deeds, and you say to me, Mark, Billy Big Body is a wonderful fellow. I don't know what a county recorder of deeds does. I assume his wife is the first lady of recording. I don't know. I trust you, so I vote for Billy Big Body.

You come up to me and say, "Mark, let me tell you: Richard Nixon is the most straightforward, honest, candid guy." I say, "Jim, you're crazy. I've seen the guy."

People feel totally capable of making a presidential decision on their own on what they decide, unless -- you know, the exception, the spouse of one candidate endorses another candidate. That makes news.

I think the Kerry thing, in a strange way, may be an exception to this, because what is the charge against Barack Obama? That he isn't experienced, that he's not ready to be president.

This is a man who was the nominee of his party, got more votes than any Democrat in history last time. There is a tendency to dis him and disrespect him in all the sophisticated circles.

But he could bear witness at a time when Obama needed witness. And I think, in that sense, it was not totally unimportant.

I think there's two Democratic endorsements that might really matter. One is Ted Kennedy, and the other is Al Gore. And I don't expect either one of them to act soon.

JIM LEHRER: Do you agree with that, Gore and Kennedy would matter, but it isn't going to happen any time soon?

DAVID BROOKS: There's no indication of that. The other one -- and we were talking about this earlier -- James Clyburn of South Carolina, senior most African-American member.

And he dropped a little hint in my newspaper today that he was leaning toward Barack Obama, in part because of some of the comments the Clintons had made about Martin Luther King, which he was offended by. I see today they've backtracked off those.

But he's such a revered figure in South Carolina, he does have an influence.