POLITICAL WRAP

April 23, 1999
		Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot and syndicated columnist Mark Shields discuss the NATO summit and the Alliance's continued air campaign in Yugoslavia.

NATO at 50 coverage Strikes in Yugoslavia Coverage April 23, 1999: Prime Minister Blair April 23, 1999: Clinton and Solana open the summit April 22, 1999: Mr. Blair's Doctrine on the International Community April 22, 1999: The Greek Foreign Minister April 22, 1999: The President of Turkey April 21, 1999: European journalists. Complete archives of Shields and Gigot.   NATO White House U.S. Senate U.S. State Department Serbian Ministry of Information	MARGARET WARNER: For end-of-the-week analysis, we turn to our NewsHour regulars, syndicated columnist Mark Shields, Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot. Paul, we just heard Prime Minister Blair talk about this new generation, and this is a theme of his, he, President Clinton, the German chancellor all part of. Is there something new do you think about their leadership style, about the way the generation of leaders is prosecuting this war? PAUL GIGOT: Well, it's fascinating, Margaret. What's new about them, of course, they are all younger and they're all part of the Vietnam generation, and at least among the big leaders, Blair, Clinton, Schroeder of Germany, they are all anti-war. They were all anti-Vietnam. What is fascinating - remarkable, I think, and maybe a little bit disconcerting is that they are all making some of the mistakes in office of the leaders they criticized back in Vietnam, the gradualism, the relying on bombing alone, that sort of thing, the gradual escalation, the sending of modulated messages to Milosevic. So if they are trying to send those messages, I don't know. They are the new generation, maybe they should go back and think about some of the older leaders like George Bush and Franklin Roosevelt. MARGARET WARNER: World War II generation, you mean. Do you see them as different? MARK SHIELDS: I do see them as different. And I see them as different, Clinton and Blair as being quite different as well. Vietnam was an American war. It was not a British war. It was not a German war. It was a war fought by the sons of America's secretaries and steelworkers, her cops and her waitresses. The well connected, the well off and the well educated were encouraged to avoid their obligation to defend their country. Bill Clinton, although he was the son of a nurse, fell in that second category. And Tony Blair doesn't have to live with the same sort of embarrassing personal history that Clinton and so many of his Republican colleagues, the leaders of the Congress have as well to this day. For Clinton it is a different problem than it is for -- Tony Blair doesn't carry the same sort of baggage about. What I found most compelling, I have to admit, in Jim's interview and his other interviews and speeches in this country is Tony Blair makes a far stronger case for intervention and involvement and suppressing and stopping the brutality of Milosevic than has been made by any of the leaders of this country.
	Europe takes the lead.
	PAUL GIGOT: I do agree with that. The striking thing to me about this is that what we're seeing is Europe is leading right now. I mean Blair and France are now making the argument first for ground troops, not that they need to be introduced right away but that they are changing the policy slowly. The President is following on that. Blair, this week talked about getting rid of Milosevic. It's not firm policy yet but that was challenged by Secretary of State Albright. So you can see that Blair is setting the agenda here. And that's a reversal of what happened in the first 50 years of NATO. It was usually an American president leading a reluctant Europe to challenge the Soviet Union on missile deployments, for example, in Europe, that sort of thing; this is a reversal of that. MARGARET WARNER: So how do you explain it, Mark? Do you think it's in their personal history, or just in their style? What is it? MARK SHIELDS: I think, again, there is a difference between Vietnam and this. I mean, this is 19 nations. The United States is the big kid on the block and I think there is a certain tentativeness that Bill Clinton has shown in his public utterances for fear that the others in their own, all politics is local and every one of those leaders faces the charge that he is America's vassal, he's America's errand boy. So I think that's part of it. But I also think that what Tony Blair does is he casts it in moral terms. He talks about genocide knows no borders. You can't say that this is a matter of autonomous political activity and nobody has the right to intrude. He said that this brutality and murder must be stopped on the continent of Europe, that a dictator cannot use these tools to keep himself in power against his own people. That is clear. And what is interesting, politically why it works, is I talked to Peter Hart, the Wall Street Journal pollster and a long time pollster in this country and Bill Clinton had fallen in public favor since their last "Wall Street Journal" survey, of public support. And he pointed out to me, he said every time the war is thought of in terms of what is right and what is moral, the American people respond to it. When they start talking about Apache helicopters not getting there or 300 more sorties having been flown or can the 70-ton tank be transported, then we get into tactics. And you noticed that Tony Blair, even when Jim pushed him, went from tactics and came right back to this is our task, this is our mission. This is what we must face, history's mandates. MARGARET WARNER: But, I mean, those are - the President strikes a lot of those themes, doesn't he, the humanitarian ones, the morality ones? PAUL GIGOT: He does. I think he definitely tries to. It may be a question that he is not as forthright. It may be, as Mark suggests, some of the personal baggage that makes him less eager to do it. But there is no question that I think this is a case where the President's preoccupation with polls hurts him because it's clear that they are looking at -- they are polling this all the time, Margaret, as the President does on everything, and they are seeing that ground troops are not something that the country is dying for. Frankly, the public is moving a little bit ahead of the politicians on that. But the public is wary quite naturally and the President is not willing to lead to get out of ahead of that and make the case for ground troops. Now, what is interesting in the polling, as Mark pointed out, is that the President's dropped 8 percentage point over all, 10 percentage points on foreign policy in a month. And as those polls fall, I think because people believe that the war really isn't going that well, I think you may see the President decide he has to go to ground troops in order to salvage the war and salvage his Presidency.
	Clinton's war?
	MARGARET WARNER: Do you think the politics of the ground troops issue has shifted at all in the last week, say in Congress? MARK SHIELDS: Well, if Congress -- if Bill Clinton fails to lead, I mean, the Congress are invertebrate lumps, as far as I'm concerned. They've shown absolutely no courage. The Republican leadership, the Democratic leadership, they just haven't been there. They've disappeared. Margaret, we went through Vietnam and the Congress at that time preferred that it be known as Johnson's war, and then they preferred to be known as Nixon's war. Now this Congress is happy -- I'm not saying all Democrats are but the Republicans certainly are -- that it be Clinton's war. It is seen as Clinton's war, not seen as America's war. But I think what you are seeing is a lot of posturing, a lot of fudging, a lot of phony, a lot of backing and filling and it's just really unimpressive. I've seen no leadership from the Congress. MARGARET WARNER: Do you think it would be different -- speaking of generations -- if Bob Dole were still Majority Leader? PAUL GIGOT: I think it would be. I do believe it would be. I also think it frankly would be if Newt Gingrich were still Speaker. I heard Newt Gingrich last week give a speech on, among other things, Kosovo. And he was forthright in saying that in backing an aggressive action and more or less with the John McCain position of now that we're in it, let's win it. So leadership does matter. But this group in Congress has decided that they are not going to take responsibility for this. And ground troops if the President asks for ground troops and makes the case for clearly having war aims, that he can justify, I think he can get that. But the Republicans do not want to have their fingerprints on it. They are not profiles in courage, that's for sure. MARK SHIELDS: Margaret, it comes down too -- really, we've learned from painful national experience that the strength of any nation is reflected and determined by the willingness of that nation to show resolve and commitment and to stand, at the price of individual sacrifice, for the common good. I mean, that's the kind of debate we need. It's more than just whether Congress is going to be responsible. We need a debate on where we are as a country. I mean, are we willing to spend another dime a gallon for gas to pay for this; are we willing to forgo our COLA increases, or our tax breaks, or whatever else - what are we willing to do? Are we just going to stand on the sidelines and watch our planes? I mean, I think that's what we're talking about now. PAUL GIGOT: This is a debate, though, that has to be led from the President. It has to be. MARK SHIELDS: I agree but we need it in the country, not simply in the Congress. MARGARET WARNER: But a mark of -- don't you think of these new leaders or this new generation is --and you even see it in Tony Blair's article say in NewsWeek, they really want, if there either a casualty-free war or a very low casualty war. I mean, you can't imagine giving Churchill the answer to Jim's question about whether, you know, British families are willing to send their sons then to die that Tony Blair did. MARK SHIELDS: Well, think yes, that is a part of it. I mean for one thing this is not a war of national survival. I mean Churchill was talking about a war of national survival. Franklin Roosevelt was talking about a war of national survival. But, I mean, I think what we have to face in this country and what has to be confronted is we all share the blessings of this country. Now are we all going to share the burdens? Or is it just going to be a few soldiers, a few Marines, a few Air Corps people, all of whom are enlistees and it seems to be a pervasively cynical attitude in this town about you volunteered -- shut up and go fight and maybe die. And, boy, that's a lousy, lousy attitude. MARGARET WARNER: What do you think about the casualty-free - PAUL GIGOT: It's a disconnect between ends and means. The President wants to make it a great moral cause. He doesn't want to use the means to achieve that end. In the Newsweek article that Tony Blair mentioned he said one of the reasons we can't have ground troops is that the refugees would be at the mercy of Milosevic. What have they been the last three weeks? But they don't want to bite the bullet of the political difficulty of the ground war. That's why, I think, John McCain, Chuck Hagel and some of these other people deserve credit for being forthright about what the costs of this are. And I agree with Mark that a debate on this is very, very welcome; it's necessary but the President has to lead this. There is no question about that. MARGARET WARNER: But do you think it reflects that the President, that the political leadership doesn't really think the American public is ready to do this or is willing to sacrifice? MARK SHIELDS: I think that's what it is and I think it has to be put in terms of sacrifice. Not that we're cheering for the home team or something, and we're going to waive penance, but just what are we willing to do, what are we willing to do as a people collectively in this case? By the way there is just one point that we kind of passed over. I don't know if the war is going that bad. I mean -- I think it's always sobering, as it must have been for Mr. Milosevic, to have a bomb hit where you keep your toothbrush. I think that's unsettling and I don't think it was totally disconnected in cause and time to the fact that we then got the peace feeler. And I certainly hope now that we don't, at this point, scurry to some totally unsatisfactory resolution. MARGARET WARNER: All right. Thanks very much. Have a good weekend.