Shields and Brooks Weigh '08 Race, Stimulus Debate

DAVID BROOKS: Well, it was, as everyone says, the nicest debate on record. I thought they were going to bend over and nibble each other's ears in the middle of it.

It was good for the Democratic Party. A lot of Republicans who were e-mailing me afterwards thought, "We're really in trouble, because they did well." And...

JIM LEHRER: You mean both of them did well?

DAVID BROOKS: Both of them did very well. And whichever gets the nomination, the other person's supporters will take a look at a debate like that and say, "Well, I could live with that other person," which wasn't always the case in the Democratic Party. A lot of Obama people really couldn't really live with a Clinton.

I thought, objectively, you know, they both did very well, and Barack Obama did probably his best single debate performance. I think objectively it helped Hillary Clinton the most.

And I say that because there was a -- not only a draw to Obama, there was a push away from the Clintons. There was anger at the Clintons and the way they'd behaved. But when Hillary Clinton behaved so well last night and it was so nice, a lot of that hostility toward the Clinton style, I think, evaporated.

And so I think, though they both served themselves very well, I think, objectively, on balance, she probably had the slightly better night.

JIM LEHRER: Because she stopped the bleeding? Do you agree with that, Mark?

MARK SHIELDS: I'm not sure who won, Jim. I will say, if, in fact, you believe the national polls -- and I don't think there's any reason you should, because -- I mean, if you think a week ago when we sat here, that was before South Carolina...

JIM LEHRER: Right.

MARK SHIELDS: ... and a thumping victory. That was before John Edwards and Rudy Giuliani got out of the race, before the Democratic Party, which has been looking for a new Kennedy for 40 years, was told they had found one by the late president's brother.

You know, we've had all this upheaval. So the polls really have not caught up. But if you do believe just generally the polls, she was ahead going in, and she certainly didn't do anything to hurt herself.

There was a strong incentive to be civil, a strong incentive on her part to repair the damage that her husband had inflicted upon her own campaign in his words leading up to particularly the South Carolina primary, which, in fact, I had the experience -- I'm sure David did, as well -- of Clinton supporters being embarrassed by what had happened.

And I think that he had an incentive -- he, Barack Obama -- to put to rest that question of the snub on the State of the Union floor.

JIM LEHRER: Which he denies there was such a snub.

MARK SHIELDS: He did, but he certainly went out of his way to overcompensate.

JIM LEHRER: Even pulled out her chair for her.

MARK SHIELDS: Pulled out her chair and held it, I mean, did not pull it out. But I thought both of them, both of them were far superior to any of the Republicans the night before.

JIM LEHRER: Oh, David, are you going to take that?

DAVID BROOKS: I wish I could disagree. They were. And the length that they were given to speak gave Obama the chance to perform better than he has before, because he does speak in paragraphs. There are six clauses in each sentence.

And when he can get it out, you see what he's trying to say. I still think, on balance, that she's better at speaking in policy terms, but he was much better.

DAVID BROOKS: No, but nobody votes on the issues.

JIM LEHRER: Oh, OK.

DAVID BROOKS: At the primary, I don't think anybody votes on the issues. People vote on judgment and character, which is exactly what they should be voting on, because we don't know what's going to happen.

And having the right leadership style, having the right ability to adjust to change, that actually is the most important means to judge a candidate on. So on issues, I don't think anybody ever votes that way in general.

JIM LEHRER: And there's not that much difference between them, is there?

MARK SHIELDS: I thought he drew a difference last night very well on the question of the war and his fitness and his qualifications for dealing with John McCain, the intended, supposed nominee of the Republican Party, at this point, that he could engage McCain, because he had opposed the war, longer and stronger, and that gave him a credential to criticize McCain's all-out support or uncritical support of the president and his invasion and occupation of Iraq, which he thought that Senator Clinton could not.

I think if you're talking about a difference between them, if you look at the information, her command of the facts is encyclopedic. It is truly impressive. There isn't a subject or an issue that comes up that she doesn't know backwards and forwards.

If you're looking for information, you want Hillary; if you're looking for inspiration, you want Obama.

DAVID BROOKS: Well, let's see. It's now being drawn as conservative versus not conservative, which is a strange thing for me. I think they're both moderately conservative.

I once asked Mitt Romney, "Who do you admire most in all of American history?" He said, "Dwight Eisenhower." He is an Eisenhower Republican, and yet Rush Limbaugh has decided he's the second coming of Ronald Reagan.

I think there, too, it's different mentalities. And it's the mentality -- one is a commercial mentality, and one is a military mentality. One based on deal-making, based on pleasing the consumer; the other based on honor and sometimes based on combativeness.

And if there was a weakness to McCain's performance in this debate this week -- and there were many weaknesses in his performance, as he and his staff now acknowledge -- it was the needless and endless combativeness. I think the polls indicate this race is over.

JIM LEHRER: You mean he fought Romney just to be fighting Romney?

DAVID BROOKS: Yes, he would just jab it in. You know, he had his pen. I thought he was going to ram it in there. He just never let up.

And partly, he was tired and a little cranky, but partly just because Romney got under his skin and bugs him. And for people in the McCain camp, they said, "If you're going to look at these two, Obama and Clinton, you're going to have to do a lot better than you did last night."

MARK SHIELDS: They never should have agreed to have the debate the night after Florida. That was a big mistake on the Republicans' part. They were still -- the wounds were still open. The feelings were still bare.

JIM LEHRER: And physically tired.

MARK SHIELDS: And physically exhausted. And John McCain was anything but the magnanimous winner. He was churlish. He was mean-spirited. You're looking for a largeness of spirit and sort of a magnanimity as the winner. My god, not on your life.

I mean, it was just -- and I think there was a certain discomfort on McCain's part, because of the issue he had raised against Romney in the closing days of the Florida campaign, accusing Romney of setting and endorsing a timetable for the withdrawal of American troops, which I think is a reach, especially for someone on the "Straight Talk Express."

DAVID BROOKS: I would say, though, interviewing the McCain people the next day, when you would interview the Bush people after a debate, they would do the spin, "We hit a homerun, perfect." When you interview the McCain people, they said, "Oh, my god, he hit him too hard. We've got to correct this."

So it was striking how different the response and the candor was from the McCain people.

JIM LEHRER: Do the debate -- does it change anything, going into Super Tuesday, do you think?

MARK SHIELDS: No, I think John McCain is in very good shape. I think the Republican Party is looking to back somebody. It's a party that likes to pick its nominee and rally round.

And I think that he's the choice. And he may not be the first choice, the ideal choice. They aren't romanced, but they think he's got the best chance, by every measurement, of being competitive with Obama and Clinton in the fall.