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| POLITICAL WRAP | |
 August 20, 1999 
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Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot and Boston Globe columnist Tom Oliphant discuss the George W. Bush drug question and the race for the Democratic presidential nominaion.(in RealAudio).
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So, Paul, let's first take the issue presented in Terry's piece. Was this a legitimate question to ask George Bush? |
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| A legitimate question? | |||||||||||
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TOM OLIPHANT: As an old fogy, could I offer a pointless dissent? The way I was brought up in this business, you should never ask a question without some factual basis for it because if you do, you are doing the moral equivalent of floating a rumor, which I was also taught a long time ago one should never do. I think the terrible thing that's happened to our business is that we have figured out ways to do this routinely today to the everlasting damage of our credibility and effectiveness. MARGARET WARNER: So in other words, to get rumors in play. TOM OLIPHANT: Exactly. MARGARET WARNER: So, do you think he had to answer it, Paul?
MARGARET WARNER: Do you think he has mishandled it?
MARGARET WARNER: The old "I ran for Congress from New York" line. TOM OLIPHANT: Second thing, to vigorously, vehemently articulate what appeared to be a deeply held principle, which is what Governor Bush did on Wednesday, and then walk away from it three hours later under pressure, may end up being the more revealing lesson from this episode. |
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| Damage control | |||||||||||
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MARGARET WARNER: Do you think the drug issue itself is serious, is potentially damaging? I mean, we have no idea what the answer to the question would be if he ever answered it, the full question, but does it have legs, or is it just something that the press is fixated on?
MARGARET WARNER: But it is possible, isn't it, Paul, that actually this will end up inoculating him on the issue. I mean, most voters are not paying attention right now. PAUL GIGOT: That's true and if nothing else comes forward, it probably does go away. The problem is now with the press sort of hungry for this and looking at it -- what if an eyewitness comes forward, even if he's lying, even if he's not telling the truth, it is probably going to get play of some kind because people are going to wonder and the press is going to play it up. And the Democrats have an interest here. Let's be candid. The Democrats have a real interest in making the Republican candidate appear to be as Clintonian as possible because the big Republican advantage is restoring moral values. It's the only one they may have -- 41 points in the battleground survey -- Republicans over Democrats. If they can chop George W. Bush or somebody else down to Bill Clinton's moral size, they can neutralize the playing field. MARGARET WARNER: Speaking of who is spreading it, though, Bush seemed to be suggesting yesterday that some of his Republican rivals have been spreading it. Have they - spreading - we don't what it is, but --
PAUL GIGOT: Never said anything to me. I might have lousy sources, but - TOM OLIPHANT: My number's in the book but nobody has called. MARGARET WARNER: Before -- it's hard to remember that a week ago we were all in Iowa for the Ames straw poll. Did the straw poll results affect the Republican race in any significant way do you think? PAUL GIGOT: I think it did a little bit. It made, I think, Governor Bush the probationary front-runner, is how I would put it. It said - no question -- we like what we see -- but we want to see more. Seven of ten of the voters said I think we want to have a race here. We want him to fill out his agenda, his core set of principles. And we don't want to write off the field yet. So I think it set up a couple of his opponents as legitimate contenders in case something goes wrong or they don't like what they see about Governor Bush but Governor Bush is still the front-runner. |
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| "All gender, no agenda"? | |||||||||||
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TOM OLIPHANT: You know, I thought on his way out of the race Lamar Alexander had the best analytical comment in which he said that he felt that in Ames and afterwards two conflicting forces: One, to nominate this guy -- just get it over with. And secondly, to have a contest. And I think the impulse to have a contest narrowly won. It has been interesting to see in the days since Ames that in a couple of cases, and I would say Forbes and McCain and Bauer, you have seen a very vigorous post-Ames activity. In a couple of other cases though, notably Elizabeth Dole taking advantage of this little window of opportunity has not been her strong suit. MARGARET WARNER: You think she hasn't because coming out of Ames she was the biggest surprise that she came in third and brought in all these new voters. PAUL GIGOT: Well, her advisors say that this is before Labor Day and the deep slumber of August, nobody is paying attention, but she does have to do something because right now she's all gender, no agenda. And that means she's running and ran successfully in Ames as somebody who is new to the process -- I'm a woman. Make a statement. But there's not a lot there. And she has to fill out what she wants to do as President. Her advisors say that will come. It hasn't arrived yet. TOM OLIPHANT: I'm struck at this point. We call it for shorthand the establishment Republican, I don't know why, but we do. The rhetoric, apart from gender of Mrs. Dole and Governor Bush, is remarkably similar in that it's mush, and it is McCain who is the more sharply focused of these establishmentarians. I don't understand in the case of Governor Bush and Mrs. Dole what the problem is completing the sentence, I am the X candidate or Y candidate in terms of agenda and not just personality. PAUL GIGOT: I think because they are the character candidates. They are running on biography. They are running on their famous names right now and they are running on their association. MARGARET WARNER: All right. We need to look at couple other famous names so don't go away. |
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MARGARET
WARNER: To assess the political fallout of the Bush story, and other
political developments of the week, we turn to Gigot and Oliphant: Wall
Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot, and Boston Globe Columnist
Tom Oliphant. Mark Shields is on vacation. 
PAUL
GIGOT: I think it is. Campaigns nowadays, presidential campaigns, are
kind of hazing exercises where we raise obstacles. The press raises
questions, sort of an obstacle course, to test a candidate's past, his
history, and tests his ability to deal with these kinds of questions.
It's legitimate to ask candidates whether or not they've committed crimes
in the past. And this is something that's come up in the past over marijuana.
Cocaine is obviously relevant. And frankly George W. Bush should know
that this kind of thing is coming. It's going to hit all the candidates.
PAUL
GIGOT: No. I think he could have stayed with his original position.
I think it might have been hard to stay with that, but he could have
which is, I won't talk about it. The problem he had is that he was willing
to talk about his past in ways that helped him. He had a very good thing
going, which is kind of the redemptive baby boomer theme. I was in my
20's, a little derelict. I got my act together. A lot of baby boomers
identify with that. No question about it. The question is, then why
not throw cocaine or drug use in with the booze, in with whatever else
was going on and just get it behind him? As a political matter, I don't
understand why he didn't say, get this back when he had a 40-point lead
in Texas or just won the Texas governor's race. Instead, by saying I
will not talk about it, he invites the press to talk -- to ask about
it. 
He
invites the tabloids to throw money around to find people who might
talk about it. I'm at a loss to understand what the strategy here has
been. And then when he changed his story this week because they hadn't
understood or hadn't thought about the FBI clearance questions, which
is that nominees that Presidents make have to answer the drug question.
I was asked that once as a White House fellow, I had to answer the question
bluntly, have you ever used cocaine? And Presidents that sit at the
top of that administration are going to have to answer that question,
too. And that just opened it up again and it made him look evasive and
not candid.
TOM
OLIPHANT: Oh, this one will be studied. This is textbook mishandling.
And one of the mistakes going in -- I think I can answer Paul's question
-- is the graveyards are full of failed candidacies where the poor guy
said going into a race, X is not going to be a problem for me because
I handled it in my governor's race. This is not that league. 
PAUL
GIGOT: I think it would hurt with some voters but I don't think it would
be disqualifying. I think if he had laid something on the table, who
knows what it is, last year, he'd still be the front-runner now, given
some of his other assets. The bigger problem I think he has is appearing
to be Clintonian if he is evasive or if he's parsing words. When I was
in Iowa last week, I asked a lot of Bush voters why are you supporting
Governor Bush? And they said basically we think he can win and he is
a man of integrity, he's a man of character. He's the anti-Clinton.
He is running as the character candidate. The big advantage the Republicans
have is restoring moral values. That helps him. He is going to have
to answer personal questions when you're running on the politics of
biography.
TOM
OLIPHANT: I think there is another problem too. We know going into this
weekend that the option of going further than he has is alive now, and
we also know it's alive because he hasn't held to the lines in the sand
he's drawn before. But there is one other consideration that's uppermost
in the minds of Governor Bush's advisors and that is the difficulty
that comes with, say acknowledging something about his past and then
defending an extremely harsh policy position about how first-time users
of tiny amounts of cocaine should be handled, i.e., with jail. And the
problem of articulating a position that your own life perhaps belies
is something that is holding them up this weekend. 
TOM
OLIPHANT: Exactly. Here I think one needs to be extremely careful. To
my personal knowledge, absolutely not. It is a top -- what has happened
in the last two days is, of course, a topic on everybody's minds in
public and in private. But I have no knowledge whatsoever of any other
rival of Bush's contributing anything in the way of rumor or innuendo
to this story. 
