SHIELDS & O'BEIRNE January 3, 1997 TRANSCRIPT

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Washington pundits Mark Shields and Kate O'Beirne discuss the ethics problems of Newt Gingrich and weigh the possibilities of his re-election as Speaker of the House of Representatives.

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A RealAudio version of this NewsHour segment is available. December 27, 1996 Shields & Gigot discuss the ethics charges against Newt Gingrich. December 23, 1996 Reps. Peter King (R-NY) and Martin Frost (D-TX) debate Speaker Newt Gingrich's future in Congress. December 20, 1996 Shields & Gigot discuss President Clinton's new cabinet picks and ethics charges against Newt Gingrich. November 22, 1996 Shields & Gigot discuss the return of Newt Gingrich and Richard Gephardt to head their respective parties in the House and the growing furor over financing. Browse the Online NewsHour's congressional converage. Browse past segments with Shields & Gigot.

JIM LEHRER: Now, our regular Friday night political analysis by syndicated columnist Mark Shields and Kate O’Beirne, Washington editor of the National Review, who’s substituting for Paul Gigot, who’s on vacation. Mark, Republican Chairman Haley Barbour says Newt Gingrich is going to be re-elected Speaker of the House on Tuesday. Do you agree?

MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated Columnist: I don’t know, Jim. I’ll say this. I think Haley Barbour probably entered the fray at a good time for Newt Gingrich, but there is and has been apparent these last couple of days more than aroma, more than a scent, a strong, strong smell of panic on the part of those endorsing and supporting the Speaker. There was pressure on both Porter Goss and Steve Schiff, two members of the Ethics Subcommittee.

JIM LEHRER: Two Republican members.

MARK SHIELDS: Two Republican members.

JIM LEHRER: Two out of four. There are two Democrats, two Republicans.

MARK SHIELDS: Two Democrats, two Republicans, to say that they saw nothing in the record that would hold the Speaker back from being Speaker again. This, Jim, was so unprecedented. I mean, this was just violative of all the traditions, principles, practices of the Ethics Committee in the past that Jim Cole, the special counsel for the Ethics Committee, who has taken a vow of silence and kept it. He has not spoken on anything. I mean, contrast him with Ken Starr, who--give him a lunch, he’ll give a speech. He hasn’t said a word. He came up and said that isn’t true, that we had agreed, the committee had agreed in advance on a reprimand, rather than a censure, so you see the Speaker, himself, having a one-man phone bank. He’s got conference calls. He’s calling members individually. There’s an anxiety and apprehension, and the biggest apprehension is will this vote, would it possibly turn out to be a vote for Republicans who are casting it for the Speaker, like Gerry Ford’s pardon or Dick Nixon in 1974? There’s something that’s going to come back and be an election issue that would bite them. There are going to be further disclosures, further revelations that are going to haunt them. And I think that’s really what makes the uncertain--probably what makes Haley Barbour’s guess as good as anybody’s.

JIM LEHRER: What do you smell, Kate O’Beirne?

KATE O’BEIRNE, National Review: I--if there’s a definition of a safe bet, Jim, it’s that Newt Gingrich gets elected Speaker on Tuesday. What’s the choice? Two men are going to run for Speaker--Dick Gephardt and Newt Gingrich. Now, I think it would be asking too much of bipartisan cooperation to expect a House Republican majority to elect Dick Gephardt Speaker of the United States House of Representatives. Newt Gingrich wins, and I disagree with Mark with respect to the atmosphere now on Capitol Hill. I would argue they were far more nervous a week ago, Republicans were nervous a week ago, more nervous than they are now. I think they are increasingly confident that they can defend Newt Gingrich on the merits of what the subcommittee’s found. They see increasingly Democratic critics having to mislead with respect to what the subcommittee found in order to attack Newt Gingrich, and there’s a growing conviction, I think on their part, that this is not about Newt Gingrich, that this is an assault on the legitimacy of the Republican majority. And I think maybe the Democrats have been smirking prematurely or have overplayed their hand. And the instinct on the part of the Republicans is to rally. Newt Gingrich might have his conservative critics and his Republican critics, but he’s also blessed by having in the minds of his colleagues all the right enemies. And they’re now rallying because they see it as an assault on all of them.

JIM LEHRER: Now, the Barbour news conference today was prompted by the story in the New York Times which said that 20 Republicans were kind of not necessarily wavering, they just--just so we get this in the record gate, it’s possible to have a vote on Tuesday where nobody gets elected because you have to have--as I understand it, you have to have a majority of--no, not of those present but of the House. So you could have 200--all the Democrats could vote for--I mean, for Gephardt and if 20 Republicans didn’t vote at all, you wouldn’t have a Speaker. Is--am I--that’s what I read in the paper today.

MARK SHIELDS: That’s what I read in the paper today too. I honestly don’t know if that is the House rule, but I--

JIM LEHRER: But you have to have--it’s not like a vote--all those voted. Before you can have a Speaker, it has to be a majority vote of all the members of the House. But at any rate what do you--how do you read that New York Times story? Do you think that is not correct?

KATE O’BEIRNE: I think there is far less than meets the eye there. I think what those twenty-some members are doing is being judicious. I’m going to be really judicious. I’m going to be very independent and look at the evidence, and then I’m voting for Newt Gingrich. You know, I mean, they’re back home. Many of them are in districts where Newt Gingrich is terribly unpopular, so what are they going to be telling the local media, I’m going to be a rubber stamp, no, they’re going to look carefully at the record. But the fact that only one member, a single freshman, Michael Forbes of Long Island, has flatly stated he’ll vote now. I thought that there was an outside chance a few others might join him now that he was the one who was willing to step out and be the first. But he’s alone out there.

JIM LEHRER: Mark, what about Kate’s point? And others have made the same point that the Democrats have actually mishandled this, I mean by smirking too quickly, to use Kate’s term, and getting out there in front. Why didn’t they just remain silent and let this thing come to its natural flow? Do you think that’s wrong?

MARK SHIELDS: I don’t think there’s a smirking. I mean, should they not respond to the press. I mean, I haven’t heard Nancy Pelosi say a word. I haven’t Ben Cardin say a word. Those are the two members, Democratic members of the committee. I haven’t heard a single Democrat on the committee say a word. Dave Bonior has been on the television, the Democratic Whip. He’s been the protagonist, I mean, just as Newt Gingrich was the protagonist. I mean, Jim, the problems with the Republicans, and Kate, I think, puts as good a spin on it as you can put on it, but I mean is this, it isn’t a Washington story. It’s a story that the “Columbus Dispatch,” and the Denver papers, I mean, that’s what the editorials--these--we could go and say, oh, it’s terrific, Newt’s okay, but all of a sudden, these people back home are hearing from their own editorialists, you got to understand this. Newt Gingrich ran against a corrupt Congress, a corrupt city, the center, the nerve center of hypocrisy and corruption, he said, is on Capitol Hill. All right. He was the reformer. He has an awful lot of Republicans who ran on a similar reform platform. Now their choice is this, Jim: you can vote for the Speaker to be re-elected. He’s either going to be reprimanded or censured. We’ve never had a Speaker before who’s been ethics--been censured or reprimanded by an Ethics Committee. Newt Gingrich, whenever there was a thing to come out of the Ethics Committee, he went to the floor. He was for the more serious penalty and punishment. He said that you couldn’t be--we couldn’t be soft on these issues. I mean, I’m telling you it’s a tough, tough vote for these folks.

KATE O’BEIRNE: Two things benefit Newt Gingrich at the moment, though. His colleagues just went through re-election where they held on, despite relentless attacks against Newt Gingrich. And I think something the Democrats are missing is Newt Gingrich is certainly personally unpopular, but that has not translated to an unpopularity for the Congress. In fact, Congress under Newt Gingrich is more popular now than it has been in ten or fifteen years. And by overplaying the hand, the public’s cynical about much of this ethics stuff. There’s every chance they begin thinking, aw, come on, you know, why don’t they start talking about the agenda, is this all about political attacks on one another, they’re playing politics again. What’s more important than the vote on Tuesday because Newt Gingrich will be elected is Gingrich’s speech on Tuesday. I think he has to be contrite, and I think he might have to plead arrogance, rather than ignorance. And if he--if he does that--

JIM LEHRER: What do you mean?

KATE O’BEIRNE: Well, maybe that he was too full of himself. You know, it happens to everybody. It’s towns like that. I mean, see if he can’t make that case. The public doesn’t like Newt Gingrich but they don’t share David Bonior’s blood lust for Newt Gingrich. And I don’t think that there’s any evidence that they’re looking for a political assassination.

JIM LEHRER: What about carrying it the next step, Kate? Frank Rich in New York Times has made the point this week that if Gingrich remains Speaker of the House that just his--the fact of his being there takes the edge off of any attacks that the Republicans might make against President Clinton and any Democrats on ethical issues?

KATE O’BEIRNE: Well, first of all, you’re going to hear the Republicans, and they’re beginning to do it now, I think increasingly reminding people that Dick Gephardt, the Minority Leader in the House, has had ethics problems and got a little wrist slap because he had filed misleading statements with the Ethics Committee. You’ll hear much of that on Tuesday. Newt Gingrich clearly--

JIM LEHRER: It’s about a piece of--some property that he owned, right?

KATE O’BEIRNE: Exactly. An expensive beach front property he owned, and was allowed to correct the record and told be more careful in the future, Dick. But I mean, it certainly, you know, didn’t rise to the level of--of derailing the entire Democratic minority. Newt Gingrich was not going to lead any ethics charges against Bill Clinton, but so they sit back and they wait for Ken Starr. They’ve got Fred Thompson, Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee’s oversight hearings beginning in February on the campaign financing in the Senate. I don’t think they’re worried an awful lot about Newt Gingrich’s hurting their ability to make an ethics case against Bill Clinton. It’s ludicrous that there’s this equivalency between Newt Gingrich’s minor transgressions and the things that are piling up about Bill Clinton, but they seem ready to live with that reality.

JIM LEHRER: What do you think?

MARK SHIELDS: Two points. A factual correction first on Dick Gephardt. Dick Gephardt amended his financial disclosure statement, if that’s what it was. That happens dozens of times on both sides of the aisle, every session of Congress. The committee voted ten to nothing, five Republicans, two--to drop it right then and there, I mean, in spite of the fact that Jennifer Dunn, Republican Deputy Whip in the House was pushing it, banging it, trying to make it an issue, ten-zip. Now those five Republicans on the Ethics Committee are not Margaret--I mean, Jim Bunting of Kentucky is a good conservative in addition to a Hall of Fame pitcher. I mean, they ten-zip said that’s it, no problem. So this is--but you can see what the Republicans are doing. I mean, Haley did it. Haley Barbour did it today. It’s--first it was the staff. My goodness, it was the staff that did it. Then it was that damn lawyer who did it. And now, now it’s the Ethics Committee. They should have done Gephardt. I mean, some plan that Kate’s absolutely right, Newt has to stay up there and say I was wrong. He can’t say he was naive; nobody believes Newt was naive. There are accusations against Bill Clinton. There’s a confession and admission on the part of Newt Gingrich. That’s a big distinction.

KATE O’BEIRNE: But all the members have an interest in--I agree with you that that’s how they handled Dick Gephardt’s problem, because traditionally that is how they’ve handled problems like this at the Ethics Committee. In fact, though, he had the same property listed as either an income property or a rental property where it benefited him to do so. And he had to figure out which is it and then amend his forms twice. Don’t forget all of the members live and die by the Ethics Committee, whatever their rules might be and however they decide to treat any of these misfiled documents or need-to-amend documents, and whatnot. Many of them, it seems to me, are worrying about what’s the criteria. You know, there but for the grace of God go I. I can run up, you know, filing--being inattentive, filing contradictory statements. And they’re not willing to let something like this with two Democrats on the subcommittee, along with two Republicans, finding no intent on Newt’s part to deceive the committee.

JIM LEHRER: Yes, Mark.

MARK SHIELDS: I just think the key moment is going to be when the counsel, James Coles, makes his case, and that’s what Republicans are understandably concerned about. Right now, Jim, the dominant attitude among Republicans that I’ve spoken to is similar to that it was when Jim Wright was in trouble; it’s a mix of compassion and fear, compassion that you don’t want to kick a friend when he’s down, especially someone who’s been a leader of his party, who’s been probably a help to you, but the fear at the same time, do I want to get too close because this could be radioactive? And that--those are the two motions that I think are competing in Republicans that I’ve talked to.

JIM LEHRER: Kate, what does it say about here we’re going to a new Congress, a new administration--a new term of a President, and we’re talking about ethics on both sides?

KATE O’BEIRNE: Jim, you had an earlier segment. Americans on crime, American cities might be safer, but the murder rate on Capitol Hill is on the increase. Yeah. This is now how the game is played. You know, you don’t argue with your opponent on a policy agenda. You destroy your opponent personally. Look at dispirited liberal Republicans, though. This, this--Republican colleagues of Newt Gingrich’s are increasingly convinced this has far less to do about 501C-3 of Internal Revenue Code and far more to do with who chairs House Committees. You--you don’t have an agenda dispute. You go after Newt Gingrich. You bring Newt Gingrich down, and by doing so, hopefully, you destroy this agenda which their President, how demoralizing, has sort of endorsed.

MARK SHIELDS: I don’t know a single Democrat who thinks that the Democrats are going to be chairs of any committee. They--I mean, that has nothing to do--I don’t know that is any part of the plan. I mean--

KATE O’BEIRNE: They’re surrendering the--

MARK SHIELDS: No. There’ll be a Republican chair, a Republican Speaker of the House. If it isn’t Newt Gingrich, then whoever it would be, whether it’s Dick Armey or Tom Delay or Henry Hyde or whoever, but it would be a Republican. Republicans have the majority.

JIM LEHRER: Mark, Kate, good night.

KATE O’BEIRNE: Good night. Thanks, Jim.

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