SHIELDS & GIGOT: POLITCAL AIRWAVES MAY 31, 1996 TRANSCRIPT

FIRST AD:

AD SPOKESPERSON: For four years, you've heard a lot of talk from Bill Clinton about balancing the budget.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: I would present a five-year plan to balance the budget.

We could do it in seven years.

I think we could reach it in nine years.

Balance the budget in ten years.

I think we could reach it in eight years.

So we're between seven and nine now.

AD SPOKESPERSON: No wonder Bill Clinton opposes a constitutional amendment to balance the budget.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Seven. Ten. Eight. Five.

AD SPOKESPERSON: Talk is cheap. Double talk is expensive. Tell Mr. Clinton to support the balanced budget amendment.

SECOND AD:

AD SPOKESMAN: America's values--Head Start, student loans, toxic clean-up, extra police, protected in the budget agreement, the President stood firm. Dole-Gingrich's latest plan includes tax hikes on working families, up to 18 million children face health care cuts, Medicare slashed $167 billion, then Dole resigns, leaving behind gridlock he and Gingrich created. The President's plan, politics must wait, balance the budget, reform welfare, protect our values.

MARGARET WARNER:Okay, Mark, what's the strategy behind these two ads? Let's take that first one. That's not really about balancing the budget, is it?

MARK SHIELDS: No. It's about the evasiveness, the President's changing positions. Disraeli once said that a leader was know and understand the times and know and understand himself. Bill Clinton certainly understands the times. I mean, he expropriated the Republican positions after the 1994 thumping his party was administered at the polls, and I thought it was revealing that in the Republican ad they used a woman as a narrator, which I thought had a subtle message, that, of reaching, that this is a Republican, didn't have that big, booming, West Point band, Vorhees march of time voice, and I thought, I thought it was an effective one because it was actual footage. The President obviously would prefer to run against the Speaker than he would to run against anybody else, and cast himself in the Democratic ad as the defender, protector, standing against the attacks, or the raids upon the environment, education, and Medicare, and the elderly that he alleges, and his party alleges the Republicans were up to.

MARGARET WARNER:Do you agree, Paul, and do you think they're effective, either one of these ads?

PAUL GIGOT: I think both ads are effective, frankly. I think the balanced budget ad gets to the question of credibility. I think the Republicans believe that Bill Clinton has stolen their issues on the balanced budget and others. And if the voters believe him, that he really means it, well, they're going to lose. So they have to cast doubt on his credibility on that subject, and that's the sort of ad, using Clinton's own words, that does it. It's fairly effective, and it's new footage. It's how he's governed as President, not, umm, something that happened before the last election as some of the other ads they've run have. The other one is--I love the line--it was going on fine and it said the words "politics must wait," which I don't know--

MARGARET WARNER:You're talking now about the Clinton ad.

PAUL GIGOT: The Clinton ad.

MARGARET WARNER:Yeah.

PAUL GIGOT: I don't know how many Americans thought that there was no politics being committed in that ad but they're, they're clearly trying to link Bob Dole to Newt Gingrich at every opportunity, and the real untold story of this early campaigning is these ads because in terms of how they're running, uh, the Democrats are outspending the Republicans like crazy. They're in every swing district around the country, in Fresno and Raleigh, Durham, every area where there are voters who could go either way, and they're trying to define this race early, and really make it over before the convention, get such a lead that Bob Dole can't come back.

MARGARET WARNER:That's true, isn't it, Mark? I mean, the Democrats spent, what $15 million and the Republicans are just starting, what, a new blitz but it's a lot smaller?

MARK SHIELDS: Bill Clinton has the advantage for the first time in 12 years, the advantage that Ronald Reagan had in 1984. No primary challenge, a big treasury, spend it the way you want, balloons, bunting, bands, and TV spots, and certainly Ronald Reagan adroitly spent in 1984 to create the terms on which he wanted to run for reelection. That's what Bill Clinton's doing.

MARGARET WARNER:Now, of course, this negative advertising has also taken a very intensely personal turn. Let's look at two more campaign commercials. The first, again, produced by the Republican National Committee, the second by the Clinton/Gore Campaign.

REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE AD:

AD SPOKESMAN: Bill Clinton, he's really something. (Whistling of "You're In The Army Now.") He's now trying to avoid a sexual harassment lawsuit, claiming he's on active military duty, active duty? Newspapers report that Mr. Clinton claims as commander in chief, he's covered under the Soldiers and Sailors Relief Act of 1940, which grants automatic delays in lawsuits against military personnel until their active duty is over. Active duty? Bill Clinton--he's really something.

CLINTON/GORE CAMPAIGN AD:

AD SPOKESMAN: He told us he would lead. He told us he could do his job and run for President, that he was a doer, not a talker. Then he told us he was quitting, giving up, leaving behind the gridlock he helped create, and now all he offers are negative attacks. Meanwhile, the real work goes on--balancing the budget, protecting Medicare, education, environment, reforming welfare, cracking down on violent crime--by a leader who's proven actions speak louder than words.

MARGARET WARNER:Paul, your reaction.

PAUL GIGOT: Both of these ads strike me as a lot less effective than the others. In the Republican ad, this didn't even run anywhere, if I'm not mistaken, or if it did, it ran only at a token.

MARGARET WARNER:No. I think you're right. It never actually ran as a paid ad. It just ran in the news accounts over and over.

PAUL GIGOT: Yeah. It was designed to draw the coverage and play up the story about the brief that the President's lawyer had filed, but I think that when you're talking about such a direct personal hit, I don't know that it is as effective as when it's linked to some issue that can also demonstrate that the way the President has governed is not honest. And that's where you can really draw your contrast. So I don't think that ad was as effective for the Republicans. It's probably why they didn't spend any money on it. The other, the other ad, I also think you can say a lot about Bob Dole. You can say that he's not a good campaigner. You can say that he's been in the Senate too long, but you can't say he's a quitter. I mean, he has come--he has fought back as, as we know from Richard Ben Kramer's book about his time coming out of Italy in the war from more hardship than most of the rest of us will ever know. He's not a quitter. Uh, and in fact--so I don't know that that's--that works for the Democrats either.

MARK SHIELDS: I don't think the quitter works at all, I really don't. I think Paul's absolutely right, that that's not a charge to be made against Bob Dole. I was waiting--

MARGARET WARNER:And do you think that's really over--do you think that could damage the Clinton campaign, or do you think it's just--

MARK SHIELDS: It doesn't help anyway but it's hard for me to see how it boomerangs. As far as the one on the President, that was a mistake, that was a serious mistake, they've amended their--by the White House on their brief and appeal that they have now amended and dropped the Soldiers and Sailors, but I mean, that opened them to that charge, but I agree with Paul, it wasn't linked--that was more for anything else than just fire up your own troops--to show to the true-believer Republicans, see, we're really going to go after the guy. This wasn't going to persuade the, the independents or the undecideds in this race, but, Margaret, I was always curious throughout this entire election year when they would use the Blues Brothers footage. (Gigot laughing) And they finally did, and I would have saved it, because I think, I think it's great footage.

PAUL GIGOT: I think you'll see it again, Mark.

MARK SHIELDS: Do you? (laughing)

MARGARET WARNER:That's a keeper, right?

MARK SHIELDS: That's right.

MARGARET WARNER:Well thanks, guys. We're leaving there.

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