Candidates Gear Up for Nevada, S.C. Nominating Contests

DAVID BROOKS: Well, I don't know. McCain and Huckabee are very tight. And you'd be foolish to predict who's going to win. I think we can tell who's -- although I've been foolish before.

JIM LEHRER: Can I say a thing? Did you say anything, Mark?

DAVID BROOKS: I was pre-empting your internal snicker. I think we know who's most vulnerable. And I would say Fred Thompson.

JIM LEHRER: He's got to win here, doesn't he, I mean, in South Carolina?

DAVID BROOKS: He's really got to win or else he's done. But he's doing well. He's put a lot into this state. And if he can't win on what's sort of his home turf, he's gone.

Mike Huckabee has a lot riding on South Carolina, because it is such a large Evangelical population. And if he can't do very well here, if not win, come in a tight second, than he will just be an Iowa phenomenon.

So I think those two have quite a lot riding. McCain has something, but he's still -- he's now up in the polls in California, doing pretty well in New York and New Jersey. So it's plausible -- though he's certainly damaged if he lost -- I think it's plausible to see him riding on for several more weeks.

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

MARK SHIELDS: I think it's bigger stakes for John McCain, for this reason. John McCain -- there is no frontrunner. It's a party yearning for a frontrunner. Nobody came out of Michigan with any momentum.

Mitt Romney won it, came into South Carolina, surveyed the situation, and headed for Nevada, where nobody, other Republican is competing, and he'll have a victory, presumably, on Saturday, where his Mormon faith is more of a political asset than obviously is a liability in South Carolina.

But for John McCain, John McCain lives with a political reality. That is, if it does ever go to a brokered convention, where the Republicans are there to pick a winner, eventually in St. Paul, John McCain will not be the choice of that convention.

There're just too many interest groups and strong interests within the Republican Party that don't like John McCain. So I think it's important for him to not go into the Florida primary with only one victory, that of New Hampshire.

He didn't win, re-create his 2000 victory in Michigan. I think, obviously, his graveyard, his boneyard, graveyard in 2000 was South Carolina. He's invested a lot of time, effort and energy. I think it's an important state for him.

How do you see that?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, here it's all a question of who shows up in the polls. Hillary Clinton has a lead in the polls, but who actually comes out to caucus?

And they haven't caucused before. And the presumption is that Obama does well because he has the most union support and the most organized support.

And so one has to think that's -- I haven't seen much development in the race since the debate. We had the big fight about race and gender and all that. Then we had the debate, which sort of pacified the waters.

And now, from what I can see of the candidates, they really are down to their core message. You know, when you do a book tour, you condense a book into about 10 pages of talking points.

Well, these people, after campaigning for a year and a half, they're down to a paragraph. They just say the same paragraph over and over again, as far as I can see.

JIM LEHRER: How do you see the stakes for Obama and Clinton in this, Mark?

MARK SHIELDS: I think the Obama campaign has failed to establish the theme. And the theme has to be for him...

JIM LEHRER: You mean in Nevada or...

MARK SHIELDS: In Nevada and nationally, I think. And I think the debate was an example. He has to be the insurgent and she's the establishment. And he's change, and she's more of the same. She is Washington; she's the past. He has failed to do that.

And I think David's right, that they are just basically pitching to their core constituencies. Neither one of them wants to go into February 5th with two consecutive defeats. They'd ideally like to go in with two victories, South Carolina being next Saturday and Nevada being tomorrow. But...

JIM LEHRER: We've got to keep in mind that the Republican primary -- the two Republican races -- I mean, the two South Carolina races are a week apart.

MARK SHIELDS: Because they're party conducted. The state doesn't have anything to do with them, in the tradition of the south. South Carolina is not what the Greeks had in mind when they founded democracy, believe me. I mean, it's a mudslide. You've got to win in a mudslide down there, on the Republican side anyway.

But I think the other issue that could be an Achilles' heel for Barack Obama is that in his -- the union that's supporting him, the culinary workers, is running a Spanish-language radio commercial which basically is condemnatory of Hillary Clinton, accusing her of being disrespectful of Spanish-speaking voters, Hispanic voters, because her, the teachers union out there, had contested the voting system that had been agreed to by all parties after the culinary workers endorsed Obama.

And I think it calls her "disgraceful." And I think -- he's run a different kind of campaign. He hasn't done any third-party, independent expenditures, advertising up until now.

And he criticized both John McCain and Hillary Clinton for doing this in Iowa or letting their supporters do it. I think that's -- it opens him up to a charge of double standards.

DAVID BROOKS: I think, in theory, he is entirely positive. In practice, he's mostly negative.

People like the idea of Bill Clinton. He's still popular, especially among Democrats, extremely popular. But when he's actually campaigning, when you see a former president attacking another candidate or condescending to another candidate, I think it has an entirely negative cast.

MARK SHIELDS: Contrast him with George H.W. Bush, whose son ran for president, and Clinton's wife. He only served the purpose of being a character reference for his son in specific instances in the 2000 campaign, very selectively, very discriminatingly used.

It cheapens Bill Clinton. He's a smaller man as a result of this campaign. David is right.

And I just think -- he got a call from a member of Congress, a very close friend, who said, "Mr. President, you're behaving like a precinct committeeman, a captain out there."

JIM LEHRER: He's getting angry, too, isn't he?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, he is. And he's a man that's done big things, I mean, with George Herbert Walker Bush, since his presidency, you know, with the tsunami and his AIDS efforts.

But I have to say, I mean, his temper, which was legendary in the White House, but only seen by the staff, now is being seen by people, you know, on YouTube and on the campaign trail.

JIM LEHRER: You think it's a negative or a plus?

DAVID BROOKS: A clear negative. I agree. He's demeaned it. And he's demeaned Hillary. He's caused Hillary all sorts of problems.

JIM LEHRER: OK, thank you all.