NewsHour Online:Shields and Gigot discuss the Iowa Caucus

IOWA CAUCUS

FEBRUARY 9, 1996

TRANSCRIPT

Our political pundits Shields and Gigot discuss the upcoming Iowa Caucus and other political matters facing the nation.

JIM LEHRER: Now, how Iowa and other political matters look to Shields and Gigot, syndicated columnist Mark Shields, "Wall Street Journal" columnist Paul Gigot. They are both in Des Moines tonight. Good evening, gentlemen.
MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated Columnist: Good evening, Jim.
JIM LEHRER: Mark, the polls, the conventional wisdom say Bob Dole is going to come in first on Monday. Have you heard, seen, or smelled anything that would, would change that?
MARK SHIELDS: No, I haven't. I would not be the farm, Jim. I wouldn't bet your farm either on the outcome here. What is absolutely unprecedented is the undecided vote is growing as we get closer, and nobody seems to know why those theories about the negative stridency of the campaign, that people are just turning off, their interest level's down, the wonderful former Democratic Congressman from Arizona, Moe Udall, who ran for President in 1976, once said that when Democrats form a firing squad, they begin by forming a circle, and that's exactly what the Republican--the Republicans have borrowed that. I don't know why Bill Clinton, the President of the United States is coming out here this week and because he just ought to leave the Republicans all the coverage they can get because they're savaging each other.
JIM LEHRER: Yeah. How do you read it at this point, Paul, and particularly on Dole coming in first?
PAUL GIGOT, Wall Street Journal: Well, I think that I would be willing to be Mark's farm. I, I think that Dole has to be the favorite here. I still think he's the favorite even though the undecided has grown. He's the familiar face here. He's got the whole state Republican organization behind him, including the governor, Terry Branstead, the Senator, Chuck Grassley, and they're going very, very hard as his surrogates attacking Steve Forbes, trying to keep him down, while Bob Dole kind of sails above it, says, I'm the man of experience, I don't need to mess around like that. Meanwhile, on the TV, he's hitting Forbes very hard. I still think he's the favorite.
JIM LEHRER: What about Forbes, though, Paul? Betty Ann--you heard Betty Ann's piece that said that at least a man in the piece said that the real test here is the test of TV advertising that Forbes has done over organization, which is what Dole, Gramm, and Buchanan and some of the others have done.
PAUL GIGOT: I think that conventional explanation is about right. Forbes is trying to do something in Iowa which has never been done, which is to come in late, and try to get a bunch of people to the polls who really have never participated in politics actively before. I talked to one of these people who was introducing Forbes at a rally this week. He had been Pat Robertson's press secretary in 1988, and he was saying that some of the people that the Forbes campaign is finding support Forbes were similar to Robertson voters in '88 not in issues but in one respect. They'd never gone to caucuses before. So they've got to get 'em out some how, they've got to create and really in two months an organization that Phil Gramm and Bob Dole and the others have been spending two years building.
JIM LEHRER: Mark, how do you read the Forbes factor, as we speak tonight?
MARK SHIELDS: Well, Jim, I think that Bob Dole, the race did not get negative until Steve Forbes got into it. It had not been a negative race. It could be accused of being a soporific race until then. But it was Forbes who really brought the negative commercial to it. Dole has responded and responded in kind; so has Lamar Alexander; so has--Phil Gramm has on the stump as well. Steve Forbes has essentially killed the unemployment issue in the Des Moines area. I mean, he has spent so much money. He's personally spent more than all the other candidates, leading candidates, combined in this state. So it is a--it is a novel approach and a question of whether, in fact, people making a connection on television and to his own personal campaigning are going to be persuaded. In Betty Ann's piece, there was a wonderful piece, a statement from Roger Mall who is, who is working for Phil Gramm in Davenport, in which he said it's a lot different to participate in a caucus in Iowa than it is to stop by the 7-Eleven or just to vote on the way in. Jim, you have to go in. You have to spend a couple of hours. You have to--you're expected to argue positions and debate with people you don't know. It's a little bit intimidating and inhibiting, as well as marvelously democratic.
JIM LEHRER: Yeah. Paul, some people have suggested that, that Iowa is really Steve Forbes' larger test than anybody else because this is the first time the Forbes surge, whatever you want to call it, is really going to be tested. Do you agree?
PAUL GIGOT: I think it is a challenge for him I think in a couple of respects. First of all, he's not doing as well in the polls here as he is in New Hampshire, as he is in Arizona, as he is in some of the other states where he's had a lot of advertising on the air. Second, the, the religious right is stronger here as part of the Republican Party and as part of the caucus turnout or expected turnout than it is in some of these other states. That is not Steve Forbes's strong suit. Steve Forbes is doing best among young voters. He's doing best among independents. He's doing best among Perot voters, better than any of the other Republicans among Perot voters, and then in economic conservative middle class voters, who don't--who might vote on election day but haven't participated in caucuses before, so it's going to be a real test of his organization to see if he can get those people out I'm not so sure that he can measure up to the expectations that his high poll numbers have set for himself.
JIM LEHRER: Yeah. Mark, Phil Gramm, we talked--the three of us talked about it on Wednesday night, but he's got a lot riding now on Monday night, does he not?
MARK SHIELDS: He sure does, Jim. You know, that campaign is close to being on life support right now, and he does have history on his side by saying that if he finishes third, he's still alive. In 1988, when both parties' nominations were open, the third place finishes in Iowa, Gov. Michael Dukakis on the Democratic side, Vice President George Bush on the Republican side, both went on to win their party's nominations but there's no question that Gramm is, is struggling at this point. He has the best-organized campaign. If you could meld two campaigns, you'd meld Buchanan and Gramm. Gramm has this marvelous organization and Buchanan has momentum but not the organization. The fear of some Gramm supporters is that all of his buses are going to show up synchronized and organized on Monday night and there aren't going to be any people on them because the campaign really took a big hit from the Louisiana results.
JIM LEHRER: Paul, what about the positive side? What did Louisiana do for, for Buchanan, or anything that you can read, anything that's--
PAUL GIGOT: It was huge for, for Buchanan. It's given him a big boost. It's given him something that he didn't have before, particularly in comparison to Phil Gramm, which was credibility. One of Phil Gramm's arguments to religious conservatives was your heart may be with Buchanan because he's a little more eloquent on the subject, a little more forceful, but he can't win. So stick with me, I can beat Bob Dole, and then I can deliver for you. By losing to Buchanan, he lost that argument, so now Buchanan can say, I can emerge as the main challenger of conservatives to Bob Dole, stick with me, and I think we saw some of that in Alaska, some of that leeching away from Gramm, we saw--we certainly saw it in Louisiana. If you look at behind the scenes here and you talk to the other campaigns, it's happening now for Buchanan.
JIM LEHRER: Is anything happening for Lamar Alexander, Mark?
MARK SHIELDS: I can't tell, Jim. There seems to be--there's a buzz about him that two people who have sort of taken the high road in this, what Dick Lugar, the Senator from Indiana called the demolition derby, this campaign out here, where everybody's attacking everybody else, and particularly attacking Steve Forbes's flat tax idea, which has been just assaulted, that, that--taken the high road, which Dick Lugar certainly has done, but he doesn't seem to be in the running, the Senator from Indiana. Lamar may--Lamar Alexander may be profiting from that. It's always struck me about Lamar Alexander's candidacy, Jim, that it--he was made for Iowa, he was made for this state in the sense that here he was a moderate Southern governor with a really exemplary record in education, in economic growth, and all the rest of it, and then he sort of recreated himself for this campaign as a--whatever he was, I mean, the anti-Washington, cut their salaries in half and send 'em home, and I think if a real original Lamar Alexander will run in Iowa on Monday, he'd be an enormously formidable candidate.
JIM LEHRER: Paul, how do you read the Alexander thing?
PAUL GIGOT: Well, I don't know that he's taken solely the high road. He sort of spits out the word zillionaire, not just a millionaire or a billionaire or trillionaire, but zillionaire to describe Forbes every time he refers to him, and he's got the exact square footage of his yacht down just, just flat. He has never found, I don't think, a real rationale to stand out. He was going to run as the outsider, somebody who wasn't Bob Dole and wasn't part of the conservative wing. Forbes sucked a lot of that energy right out of that message because Forbes hasn't been in politics before. So for a lot of voters, he's a more authentic outsider. And now Lamar Alexander's trying to run right up the middle between Bob Dole and Steve Forbes and saying, look, I agree with both of them about each other, a pretty good line, but there isn't, I don't--it's going to be hard for him to do that, but he's still in the running for, for perhaps third place.
JIM LEHRER: Mark, you've been around a while. You've covered Iowa many times before. How important should we look--how important is Iowa going to be do you think to the final outcome, can you tell?
MARK SHIELDS: Iowa is enormously important, Jim. If you don't make it here, this isn't the New Haven tryouts. You can't rewrite the second act. If you're not in the top three, the chances are you're history, you're toast, you'd better go back to your day job because that's been, that's been the history. It gives it enormous lift going into New Hampshire. We are incapable of covering even gifted journalists, people like Paul and myself, of covering eight or nine campaigns simultaneously.
JIM LEHRER: Sure. Sure.
MARK SHIELDS: So what Iowa does is it winnows it down to, to three, two or maybe three at the most, and those are the people who will be getting coverage, who are getting the oxygen of the political world come next Tuesday.
JIM LEHRER: Okay. And we'll be talking about it then, and at other times next week. Thank you both very much.
MARK SHIELDS: Okay.
PAUL GIGOT: Thanks, Jim.

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