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| POLITICAL WRAP
April 17, 1998The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer Transcript |
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It was a busy week in Washington. Paula Jones said she was appealing the decision to throw out her sexual harassment suit and Ken Starr stated that the end of his investigation of President Clinton was "not in sight." Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot and syndicated columnist Mark Shields, joined by Andy Kohut, discuss the week's events and a new poll of Washington powerbrokers.
JIM LEHRER: Now, Shields & Gigot, joined in a few minutes by Kohut, syndicated columnist Mark Shields, Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot, and Andy Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.
A RealAudio version of this segment is available.
NEWSHOUR LINKS:
April 16, 1998
Paula Jones will appeal the dismissal of her case against the president.
April 1, 1997
A judge dismisses Paula Jones' sex harassment case against the president.
January 22, 1998
How have sex scandals impacted the presidency?
Browse the NewsHour's coverage of the White House and the Shields and Gigot archives.
OUTSIDE LINKS:
Pepperdine University School of Law.
The Pew's survey of Members of Congress, Clinton Appointees, and Senior Civil Servants.
Mark Shields: "There’s no more Malibu Ken [Starr] in the future."
First, Mark and Paul, double news of yesterday. Paul, Kenneth Starr says there is no end in sight of his investigation of the president. How do you read that?
PAUL GIGOT: I read that as bad news for the White House, but not surprising news. Ken Starr is moving straight ahead. I think what he was saying was that all of the attacks on the White House on him and in public speeded up, get going. In private, pursue every privileged claim you possibly can to slow it down. He’s saying, I’m going to keep going ahead, and as long as it takes to do the job that I deem proper, I will do. So the--and one ironic point is all the attacks on Starr may have the effect of
hardening him to keep moving ahead.
JIM LEHRER: Same reading?
MARK SHIELDS: No. Ken Starr’s announcement first of all that he was going to forego the deanship at Pepperdine was a thoughtful, reasonable decision, one he should have made originally when you recall he was going to do it--wrap the thing up more than a year ago and four days later couldn’t. I
think it was an attempt and understandably so to sort of recoup some public standing. His own public standing has plummeted way down in other regions, and he wanted, I think, to communicate that he was serious about this, that he was concerned, that he was on the job, that he was professional. I think it was an image building effort on his part and one that’s sorely needed if he’s going to, in fact, pursue this.
JIM LEHRER: Just the technique--the first real news conference he’s had. I mean, he was still standing outside in front of microphones. It wasn’t a sit-down kind of news conference, but that’s a change, is it not?
PAUL GIGOT: He’s got a new public relations lawyer, a lawyer brought on from another independent counsel, Mr. Smaltz, his investigating the former Agricultural Secretary.
JIM LEHRER: Not Smaltz himself but--
PAUL GIGOT: A guy that worked for him, yes. But you can’t, if you’re an independent counsel, you can’t have anything like some kind of a PR offensive. I mean, you’re constrained so much by the rules of grand jury testimony and evidence you can, however, respond to some of the charges against you and maybe that was part of this, but I don’t know how Mark disagreed with me, it seemed to me Starr was saying he was going to move ahead.
MARK SHIELDS: There was an image burnishing effort. I mean, Paul had him as this--sort of fellah on the Yukon Tundra going against the great odds, and I think there’s no question, he is laying down, that he is on for the duration, that there’s no more Malibu Ken in the future, that this is his task.
JIM LEHRER: What about the other issue that he spoke to in addition to Pepperdine, which was the David Hale--was a very complicated story, the judge, who has been testifying against the president, not on Monica Lewinsky, none of that stuff but has to do with the old Whitewater--remember Whitewater--the old Whitewater thing. Now, the allegation here was that he had been paid by the same people--same group that was underwriting the Pepperdine deanship, et cetera. How do you think he handled that yesterday in terms of--
MARK SHIELDS: I don’t think anybody has come down on this one yet, Jim. I think it probably would be better off--there’s a lot of fencing back and forth between the Department of Justice and Ken Starr--it probably would be better to turn over to Howard Baker or somebody who’s a recognized figure of some impartiality and objectivity and fairness and let him investigate, get away from--
JIM LEHRER: Somebody suggested that here last night on this program. In fact, how do you feel about it?
PAUL GIGOT: I think that’s probably what’s going to happen. It may not be a Howard Baker type, but it might be--Michael Shaheen has surfaced--someone who has--
JIM LEHRER: Who’s Michael Shaheen?
PAUL GIGOT: He was--head of the integrity section, public integrity at the Justice Department, an independent figure within it. I don’t know if that’ll go ahead, but something like that. What Starr was doing yesterday, though, was responding to a rocket, rather tendentious one, the Justice Department had sent to him saying we can’t investigate this allegation but we think you have a few conflicts, and Starr was saying, look, if I got conflicts of the appearance of one, it’s merely the appearance, you’ve got real ones because, after all, this fellow Hale has made charges against the president.
Paula Jones appeals the decision.
JIM LEHRER: On the other issue yesterday, other news yesterday, Paula Jones, to nobody’s surprise, has said she was going to appeal the dismissal of her lawsuit, something there for anybody in the White House or elsewhere to work with that?
MARK SHIELDS: Well, it guarantees that the issue’s going to be--it’s not going away, and it’s going
to be with the president probably--it’s not a legal threat, or problem as much as it is a political problem. It’s going to be there probably for the remainder of the presidency. For the first time Paula Jones--it’s amazing--we’ve been through this whole thing where nobody has heard or seen Linda Tripp. Nobody’s heard or seen Monica Lewinsky. Nobody’s heard or seen--all kinds of impressions have been formed about these people, and Paula Jones, yesterday, rather a poignant sight, I thought, as she made her presentation, I mean, as a woman whose husband has lost his job. You know, they probably couldn’t give up the pursuit of quite frankly, bluntly, at this point--their options weren’t that limited--just for economic survival it probably was important to pursue it, but it’s not good news for Bill Clinton. It’s not good news for the White House.
PAUL GIGOT: She might have been a much better advocate for her case earlier on than some of the advocates that—
JIM LEHRER: For her.
JIM LEHRER: It’s in the appeal process.
PAUL GIGOT: The appeal will be played out and it probably--if it goes to trial, goes to trial in the latter stages of his presidency. I think it does affect the president on the question of legacy and public image, as he--and a personal image of standing as he would leave power, if for some reason this does go to trial.
A report on the Washington powerbrokers.
JIM LEHRER: Okay, change of subject here, and I’m going to bring in Andy Kohut with a different perspective on issues and politics, and it comes from the very top--members of Congress,
presidential appointees, and senior civil servants, these government officials were polled recently about how they view their jobs and the public. The polling was done by the Pew Center in association with the National Journal. Andy, first of all, give us a general view of who these people were you talked to.
ANDREW KOHUT: Well, we interviewed 81 members of Congress. We interviewed 150 senior civil
servants and about 100 Clinton appointees, and the objective here was to find out how Washington leadership is faring in an environment which the American public is very distrustful of Washington, very distrustful of political leaders, and we found a lot of mistrust going in the other way, and we also found a big disconnect, and we asked these leaders, all three groups, does the American public know enough to make wise decisions about policy questions, only--
JIM LEHRER: We have the graphic.
ANDREW KOHUT: We have the graphic. Only 31 percent of the members of Congress that we polled said, yes. Fewer--one in six Clinton appointees--about the same percentage of senior civil servants said that, and the--
JIM LEHRER: It’s kind of interesting, isn’t it?
ANDREW KOHUT: It certainly is.
ANDREW KOHUT: That’s the perception, and these groups aren’t relying on the public’s judgment. They’re saying the public doesn’t have the facts. And when we asked these same groups, does the public have a good judgment on election day, two out of three said not a great deal. And you can imagine that it was the members of Congress who stood up for the public’s judgment.
JIM LEHRER: Because if they hadn’t had good judgment, they wouldn’t be in Congress, right?
ANDREW KOHUT: That’s understandable. The big disconnect, or the big misunderstanding is that all three groups recognize how much the public distrust government. And, as a consequence, they all misread how much the public wants--still wants government housing, activism--even in spite of this distrust by a margin of 58 to 33, for example, they say the typical American wants a smaller government, not an activist government, when we--
JIM LEHRER: Now, that’s the group--that’s the leaders you--okay.
ANDREW KOHUT: The leaders--we asked the public that same question. By almost a reverse margin the public favors a more activist kind of government.
JIM LEHRER: So what’s--how do you read all of that--what’s that mean?
ANDREW KOHUT: What it means is this is a very ideological perspective on things here in Washington--Democrats favoring government but not thinking the public wants an activist government--Republicans not favoring an activist government, and overstating by a lot how much the public is willing to accept government’s solutions even though it doesn’t like government, even though it distrusts government.
Andy Kohut: "The media is blamed for much of this distrust problem by all three groups."
JIM LEHRER: And did you poll these--I know you did--I know the answer to this question I’m about to ask you. You did poll these people on why they believe the public distrusts government, right?
ANDREW KOHUT: I did, and all three groups say similar things. Members of the Civil Service and the Clinton appointees put a lot of emphasis on the government isn’t misunderstood; they put a lot of emphasis on the media portraying government poorly. The media comes--gets very very poor ratings in terms of its coverage, and the media is blamed for much of this distrust problem by all three groups.
JIM LEHRER: How does that break down among the three groups? Who mistrusts the media? I mean, who blames the media more?
JIM LEHRER: There we go. We have the number there.
ANDREW KOHUT: All state in pretty large percentages that the media is at fault--70 percent or more give the media poor ratings for covering its realm of government. But what’s interesting is none of these groups blame the principal source of the problem from the public’s point of view. The public largely says it’s the political leadership, it’s the Washington leaders, is the reason why we distrust government. Understandably, only 7 percent of members of Congress say that, 10 percent of Clinton appointees, 9 percent of senior civil servants, so there’s an awful lot of talking across one another.
JIM LEHRER: But that’s the biggest disconnect, is it not? I mean, each are blaming the other for what the problems are.
ANDREW KOHUT: Each are blaming the other, and there is not a recognition. There is a significant underestimate of how much the public is willing to want to see
Paul Gigot: "The era of big government being over is what’s really over."
JIM LEHRER: What do you think of this, Paul?
PAUL GIGOT: A couple of reactions. One is thank God for elections, thank God for democracy because you have a real disconnect here between elite opinion and
JIM LEHRER: Mark.
MARK SHIELDS: I dissent. And I’ll tell you why. I think that there’s two reasons we have little confidence in government right now, in spite of government’s I think manifold successes. The first is that we’ve had divided government in this country now for more than a generation. When you have divided government, one party controlling the Congress, the other party controlling the executive, the two parties don’t simply attack each other, Jim. They end up attacking that branch of
JIM LEHRER: Do you have polling data on that, the divided government issue?
ANDREW KOHUT: Well, there’s--
JIM LEHRER: I mean, knocking the other institution—
ANDREW KOHUT: There’s a great deal of acknowledgment on the part of the public in support of divided government. It’s beginning to inch up but still it’s a minority view at the individual level. On the aggregate level you can say well, we’re voting for Republicans for Congress and a Democratic president, so there’s support for it. I think what’s really important is the extent to which members of Congress who take a very ideological view of the issue of government when we ask them why aren’t things moving out even further here, they blame partisanship, they blame arguments between the president and the Congress, and this issue of partisanship being
JIM LEHRER: But divided government is seen by some, Paul, as checks and balances.
PAUL GIGOT: We have had experience--two experiences in the last 20 years--with undivided government. They were both with Democratic Congresses and Democratic presidents under Bill Clinton for two years. The public reacted--and under Jimmy Carter. In both cases the reaction to that was rather sweeping. They threw out the Democrat in Congress in ‘94; they elected Ronald Reagan on an explicitly reduce the size of government agenda in 1980, so I think the point that maybe the public does want some kind of divided government I think has some credibility.
JIM LEHRER: You know what? We’re going to have to continue this conversation some other time. Thank you all three very much.
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