Amid Tensions on the Trail, Democrats Head Into S.C. Contest

DAVID BROOKS: Well, Barack Obama has a big lead, as you mentioned in the news summary. It's shrinking. But if he doesn't win South Carolina, it's over. I mean, it's a state with a high African-American voting bloc.

JIM LEHRER: Fifty percent of the registered Democrats.

DAVID BROOKS: But then he still has problems beyond even if he wins. Since there seems to be relatively little bounce from state to state, you look at the big states, the Californias, and he's just way behind, way behind.

And this week, the story has been Bill Clinton and the nasty mud wrestling they've gotten into has -- let's face it, so far, it's helped the Clintons. It's offended me and a lot of my friends.

I just think what the Clintons have said has been shameless and absurd. The idea that Barack Obama was supporting Ronald Reagan's policies is just a lie. And they say these things because they think it will work, and it does work.

And so far I think the Clintons have discredited themselves to a great degree, but politically it's been quite effective.

JIM LEHRER: Politically quite effective, Mark?

MARK SHIELDS: If you read the numbers, it certainly has been, Jim. I mean, there's no question.

I mean, the most baseless charge that Bill Clinton has made this past week-and-a-half, two weeks is that Barack Obama injected the issue of race into this campaign. I mean, it would have been political suicide.

This is a country, the last time I looked, that is overwhelmingly white. I don't think there was a President Jesse Jackson inaugural speech. It was not in his interest.

Barak Obama decided to run just as Jack Kennedy had run in 1960, when Kennedy said, "I am not the Catholic candidate for president. I'm the Democratic candidate for president who happens to be Catholic."

He ran as a Democratic candidate for president who happens to be black, not as the black candidate. And the Clinton campaign set out deliberately...

JIM LEHRER: Deliberately?

MARK SHIELDS: Deliberately, no question. I think David would agree.

JIM LEHRER: Would you agree, David?

MARK SHIELDS: Yes, to make him the black candidate. Bill Clinton is already into a pre-spin about the South Carolina result. And it reads this way: They tell me Hillary can't win down here because blacks are going to support Barack Obama overwhelmingly.

Therefore, if he wins, the win is discounted. Tom Daschle, the former Senate Democratic leader and an Obama supporter, said yesterday this is a cynical ploy and strategy on the president's part, on the Clinton campaign's part, to discount, to say, "OK, if he wins, then the only reason he won was because of race."

JIM LEHRER: And yet your newspaper endorsed Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama. Did you have a vote in that?

DAVID BROOKS: I don't get a vote in that. Columnists are totally separate from the editorial page.

JIM LEHRER: How important do you think that is? I know it's an unfair question, but I'm going to ask it...

DAVID BROOKS: Yes, it is an unfair question, thank you. I would say, just in terms of -- not talking about the editorial and what my friends and colleagues wrote -- I'd say it helps to some degree in Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey, with some voters who may have been wavering.

But as Mark has said on this program, the higher up you go, the less endorsements matter. And I do think, overall, it probably doesn't matter all that much.

MARK SHIELDS: I think you'll see some Democrats who are as offended as we've described our own reaction to what the Clintons have done. I think you may see some endorsing Obama, prominent Democrats, early next week, regardless of the outcome.

I'd say that they probably -- the endorsement of Hillary Clinton meant the natural constituency for Barack Obama, in places like Connecticut and suburban New York and New Jersey, may now think that Hillary Clinton is more acceptable.

DAVID BROOKS: Well, he's an effective campaigner, so wherever he campaigns he's likely to win. But, again, I don't see any future. There's no road to the nomination for him.

He, like Huckabee, does represent a portion of his party. And if there really is a fractious fight leading to a convention, he can play an important power broker role. But as a nominee, I don't see any road there.

JIM LEHRER: You didn't see this recent polling that he's rising a little bit below Hillary Clinton, that doesn't mean that much?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, yes, he's an effective campaigner, and he does well. People like the themes he strikes, and he does influence the debates. But...

JIM LEHRER: A quick word on that, Mark?

MARK SHIELDS: If he were to finish second tomorrow, and Obama were to win, then it gives the Obama campaign -- our politics is such, Jim, that whoever wins can say what it means.

I mean, the Clinton people said what it meant when they won in Nevada. And then Obama would be free and entitled to stand up and say, "The voters of South Carolina, used to really bare-knuckles politics like the 2000 campaign, where John McCain was savaged by the Bush folks, have said no. They've rejected this kind of politics here."

And I think it would give him a chance as a narrative going forward into the 5th of February that would be a little bit different from the narrative coming in. And it would put the Clintons somewhat on the defensive.

DAVID BROOKS: Well, as I've said before, they handed out free money. I mean, I love bipartisanship. It's too bad in this case it had to be so meager.

I mean, you look at the -- I have a study here in front of me by Christina Romer and David Romer of Berkeley, where they've surveyed all the stimulus packages since Eisenhower. They've never done all that much for the economy.

The last time we had a tax rebate, people spent about 20 percent to 40 percent of the money on stuff. So I just don't expect it's a big boon for anybody, except for maybe the politicians who can say, "We did something."

So I love bipartisanship. I just wish there were a little more substance in this case.

JIM LEHRER: Well, that's what we talked about last week, that the big plus here -- if there is a plus -- is that at least they finally got together. Does that remain the only plus? And is it a big plus?

MARK SHIELDS: They did get together. And David -- you know, I don't want to say unearned cynicism -- but I do think -- I mean, George Bush, who's made a habit of saying, "I give no ground," gave ground.

And I think, under the urging of Ed Gillespie, his political counselor, Henry Paulson, the secretary of the treasury, and Josh Bolten, the chief of staff, who said, "Look, we've got to do this, if we're going to get it."

I think there was a little fear that the repetition of what his father had gone through, by a perceived indifference to the economic plight in 1991, which cost him his re-election in '92, in many people's minds, that he seemed disengaged, and they didn't want that to be the case.

But they did give. And the Democrats gave. The Democrats gave up the most tested formula for really boosting the economy, which is increasing unemployment benefits, extension of, and food stamps, and subsidies for home heating fuel. And they gave on that.

DAVID BROOKS: I understand the political logic; I just don't understand the economic logic. I mean, they did give. Both my current colleagues, Paul Krugman on the left, my former colleague, Paul Gigot on the right, dislike this package.

MARK SHIELDS: That's right.

DAVID BROOKS: So there is a center there. It's just the idea that a stimulus package is going to stimulate a lot of the economy, there's not that much economic evidence to support that.

JIM LEHRER: What about the politics now in the Senate? In our news summary, we had a clip there from Henry Reid, Senate majority leader, saying, well, we've got to fool with this a little bit now. Does that kind of -- are the house of cards likely to fall now or not?

DAVID BROOKS: They would really be facing -- again, the political logic for this is quite overwhelming. The Senate does not like to be railroaded by the other body.

And yet if they interfered with this and busted up this deal, they would leave themselves so wide open and so vulnerable in case this recession got really bad that I can't imagine they'd do that.

JIM LEHRER: Do you agree?

MARK SHIELDS: I do. I mean, Harry Reid said, the Senate Democratic majority leader, that he had ceded, delegated, or given his proxy to Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, and that's where the package was, in fact, negotiated.

Now, Max Baucus, who's the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, a Democrat from Montana, said he was going to introduce his own bill. I mean, that was fine what the House did.

And I think there is a sense right now that acting soon is imperative, if anything is going to work at all.