POLITICAL WRAP January 23, 1998 The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer Transcript

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Following a cabinet meeting to discuss the upcoming State of the Union address, several administration officials expressed support for the President in the midst of the latest allegations. But has he convinced the rest of the country? Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot are joined by pollster Andy Kohut to talk about the latest scandal to rock the White House.

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A RealAudio version of this segment is available. NEWSHOUR LINKS: January 22, 1998: Shields and Gigot discuss the legal implications of President Clinton's alleged affair. January 22, 1998: The legal implications of President Clinton's alleged affair. January 22, 1998: Presidential historians and experts put the brewing crisis in perspective. January 21, 1998: President Clinton responds to charges that he may have had an affair with a former White House intern. January 16, 1998: Mark Shields and Paul Gigot discuss the impact of the Paula Jones case. May 27, 1997: A discussion on the ramifications of the Paula Jones case on the office of the Presidency. January 13, 1997: Paula Jones's case goes before the Supreme Court. Browse the NewsHour's coverage of the White House and legal issues The Shields and Gigot index page.

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, some analysis of the President Clinton investigation story by Shields & Gigot plus Kohut; syndicated columnist Mark Shields, Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot, joined tonight by Andy Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. Mark and Paul, first, just give us an overview of where you think the story stands tonight.

A lot has happened in a week.

MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated Columnist: Well, I mean, just remember back a week, Jim. A week ago tonight the Republicans were in a state of absolute, if not despair, then at least pessimism. They felt that Bill Clinton had dominated the political scene; he’d extended the State of the Union from a single event to a month long series of announcements, all of which raises poll numbers. People met favorably. Now, the State of the Union address, the Republicans have done nothing int he meanwhile, and they’re sitting in the cat bird seat. And the State of the Union Address will be looked at by the American people next Tuesday, what’s he going to say; is he going to say anything about the story, the allegations? It’s going to be a question of his performance there, rather than the substance. So it’s just a whole--the whole presumption in the political world here is switched.

JIM LEHRER: Yes. Go ahead, Paul.

PAUL GIGOT, Wall Street Journal: It rests where it was yesterday, I think, which is that the whole world, in particular, President Clinton and Ken Starr waiting on Monica Lewinsky.

JIM LEHRER: Yes.

PAUL GIGOT: The President is frozen from speaking or acting until we find out, he finds out what she does.

JIM LEHRER: And the two elements there: one was she was to give a deposition in the Paula Jones case, and that has been delayed by the Judge. The question is whether or not she then talks to the Kenneth Starr people--

PAUL GIGOT: That’s right.

The President's options are limited.

JIM LEHRER: --who are on the criminal side. What do you make of the announcement a short while ago from the White House that the President is not going to address the allegations against him again until after the State of the Union? There had been some talk all day he might do a press conference; he may do something else.

PAUL GIGOT: I think it was the least terrible of terrible choices. If he had canceled the State of the Union, that would have been a bad signal about this affecting his ability to be President. If he goes out and had a press conference or spoke before the State of the Union, what would he say? He’s really paralyzed because he’s waiting for Monica Lewinsky to decide if she’s going to--if she declares it all a fantasy, which he would like that--I’m sure he would like that to happen--then--

JIM LEHRER: We ought to explain that; that if she says my original statement in which I said there was no affair with the President, that I stick by that, and that is, in fact, the case, and no, nobody asked me to try to, or asked me to lie about it--

PAUL GIGOT: I was trying to impress a friend.

JIM LEHRER: Right. And just made up the story. What do you think about the strategy of the White House at this point not to go public anymore?

MARK SHIELDS: I think the White House has limited options, Jim. There is an unearned cynicism in Washington, but where Bill Clinton is involved in telling stories, there’s a certain earned skepticism. The President in 1992 spoke about a woman he didn’t sleep with and a draft he didn’t dodge, and yet, we learned later that there’d been a draft notice delivered to him at Oxford, which he had forgotten about, and now, at least the report is widely circulated that he, in fact, in the deposition did say that he had had an affair, not a 12-year affair, with Gennifer Flowers. So I think they have to be very careful. That’s why when people parsed and post-mortemized and analyzed your interview with the President the other night about the tense he used--

JIM LEHRER: Right.

MARK SHIELDS: --the form of the verb and all the rest of that, I think they want to--when they do go out and the President does, and he’s a brilliant, brilliant, I think, advocate for himself, they want to be sure that all--everything’s in a row.

How should we read the polls?

JIM LEHRER: All right. Let’s bring Andy into this. Has there been any significant polling that we should pay attention to about this issue thus far?

ANDREW KOHUT: Well, when political things change quickly, the pollsters go into action, and there have been a half a dozen polls in three days, and there have been four that I’ve looked at closely, and they tell a very significant story. And the story is simply this, that the American public hasn’t rushed to any judgment about Bill Clinton, on the one hand, but on the other hand, they’re taking this very seriously. They’re not looking at it like Whitewater or campaign finance and saying this isn’t a matter of grave importance; they’re saying, 41 percent, for example, and the CBS poll said--

JIM LEHRER: Let’s put the CBS poll up there, right. There we go.

ANDREW KOHUT: A matter of great importance, 18 percent said that about Whitewater, 30 percent said it about campaign finance, and you can see Watergate on the chart at 53 percent in June of 1973, which was five, six months into this--into that major scandal that brought down Richard Nixon. So the American public are paying more--are taking this very seriously. If you look at the opinions they’re expressing about Bill Clinton and what should happen if he, indeed, did some of these things, they are, indeed, taking it seriously, but four out of five of these surveys show no difference in his approval rating, so people are not changing their bottom line judgments all that quickly.

JIM LEHRER: And Mark was right when he said a moment ago, going into this "scandal," he was doing really well on the approval, was he not?

ANDREW KOHUT: He was 60 percent in our poll last weekend, a weekend in which he was being deposed in the Paula Jones case.

The Presidential popularity game.

JIM LEHRER: There we go right--this compares second-year terms--second-year presidential approvals--well, it speaks for itself. People can read that.

ANDREW KOHUT: He’s up there with Lyndon Johnson in 1966 and with Reagan in 1986, up in the 60's, not quite to the Dwight Eisenhower level, but we’ll never see those levels again, and certainly was doing better than Richard Nixon did when he was so much under fire. He was doing very well, the whole political establishment is doing well, people feel good about things, and then comes this sort of body blow to public opinion.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Now, the cliche here, the conventional wisdom is that the American people have immunized Bill Clinton on the sex issue because of the ‘92 election and then the ‘96 re-election. Do the polls bear that out, just going into this--in other words, going into this scandal, was that true?

ANDREW KOHUT: Going into this scandal the American public recognized that Bill Clinton has had problems in his marriage; he’s fooled around; there’s lots of rumors; there’s lots of allegations. Paula Jones has been an ongoing scandal for three years, or an ongoing issue for three years. And the public is accustomed to this. What’s different about this and different from the other problems that have plagued his character problems is that many of these things when we’d poll on Whitewater, people would say, well, this is probably a little bit wrong, or the campaign finance, they all do it. In point of fact, if people feel that he’s guilty of these things, it’s not going to be judged as a little bit wrong; it’s going to be judged as a lot wrong. And that’s why--

JIM LEHRER: And the polls show that?

ANDREW KOHUT: Indeed.

JIM LEHRER: Does that surprise you?

PAUL GIGOT: It doesn’t, Jim. It doesn’t because the public seemed to be willing to, as the writer Michael Kelly put it, suspend disbelief about this president as long as things were going well and as long as it happened before his presidency. But now that the old character issue, the old doubts that were raised about him in his past have reasserted to affect his presidency, his time in office now, his ability to perform the job, and his honesty in the job, one of the things I’m surprised--

JIM LEHRER: Allegations.

PAUL GIGOT: That’s right.

JIM LEHRER: Right.

Gennifer Flowers and Paula Jones seem to be benefiting.

PAUL GIGOT: But one thing that has been reported widely this week is the Gennifer Flowers change of story. Well, a lot of people, despite the nitpicking was it a twelve year affair or a ten year affair, a lot of Americans heard that as a flat out denial. And now to be told that he has testified, reportedly, in court that--or in a deposition that he did have an affair--I think that affects a lot of people about his honesty.

JIM LEHRER: I didn’t ask you--I don’t know if you’ve come prepared with the answer to this question but I’m going to ask you anyhow, Kohut. What does the polling say about what the state of the American people’s belief was in the Gennifer Flowers case? Do you remember?

ANDREW KOHUT: Well, I think he was--the President very successfully put that behind him. He said this was an issue; this was a problem in my marriage; he kind of obfuscated, and people went on to other things.

JIM LEHRER: But there was never a polling data that--how many--do you believe that the President had an affair with Gennifer Flowers--60 percent this, 20 percent that--nothing like that ever came--

ANDREW KOHUT: Not to my recollection, but I must say that the NBC poll last night showed a 10 percentage point up tick in feeling that--

JIM LEHRER: There we go.

ANDREW KOHUT: --that Paula Jones was telling the truth, and earlier in the week 27 percent said Paula Jones was telling the truth. By last night it was 37 percent. So what Paul was saying about this potentially leading to giving these other problems more credibility, speaking to perhaps a devastating character flaw, is really possible.

JIM LEHRER: Yes. What do you think about the poll thing?

The President's pact with the American people.

MARK SHIELDS: Well, I think I have a little different take on it from Paul. I think there was almost a tacit agreement made between the electorate in 1992 and candidate Bill Clinton in which the voters, more or less, said, we know that your behavior has not been exemplary up to this point, but that was Governor of Arkansas, and your misbehavior was that, affected a few people, your immediate family and others. But now we’re talking about the presidency. The President is more than the top official of the United States Government. He’s more than the head of the government. The President is the leader of the nation, and the President is the teacher in chief, commander in chief, and the preacher in chief, and we expect the President to have a higher standard of morality than a senator or a CEO or a columnist. That seemed to be the bargain. And I think that was the bargain struck. And if that’s showed--that agreement--call it an agreement or whatever--was breached, I think the political consequences will be serious.

JIM LEHRER: Do you think the polls back up what Mark just said or vice versa?

ANDREW KOHUT: I think the American public has accepted that Bill Clinton was not a particular trustworthy person, but he does two things: He’s performed, and people feel a connection with him; they think he understands his needs, and what they’ve told us consistently and said it at the ballot box, that’s more important than this man’s personal character. But you reach a point, or the public may reach a point where it will say, well, he’s crossed the line. And the question is: whether this is an issue where the public will say, he’s crossed the line.

JIM LEHRER: Let me ask you a professional question here to help us lay people, who do not know that much about polls. There are going to be scads of polls. As you said, there have already been five and this thing didn’t really break until three or four days ago. There are going to be scads of polls over these next two or three weeks, however long, or months, however long this thing goes. Give us some guidance on how to read them.

The poll numbers game.

ANDREW KOHUT: I think you wait a while and you watch the trend line on the basic question do you approve or disapprove of Bill Clinton. If he begins to go into the 40's by--high 40's by early next week, he’s in trouble. If it stabilizes in the 40's, he’ll have a presidency where his credibility is under question. If the bottom falls out, he’ll do what Nixon did and go into the 20's.

JIM LEHRER: What would you add to that?

PAUL GIGOT: I wouldn’t. I think that that’s important to watch and important to watch how well he is able to govern and work with Congress.

JIM LEHRER: And how he does Tuesday in his State of the Union?

PAUL GIGOT: The impressions that--approval ratings matter because they affect how other politicians see you and your relative power, so if that begins to decline, the President’s proposals and his authority diminish.

MARK SHIELDS: In Washington, power is the perception of power. If people think you have power, people think you’re popular--

JIM LEHRER: You’ve got it.

MARK SHIELDS: --you are popular. One thing I’d add to what Andy said earlier just briefly, and that is that we will never see ratings again as high as those for Dwight Eisenhower. Each succeeding president has started with a lower favorability rating on election day, and they’re continuing to go lower.

JIM LEHRER: And that’s the name of the game, and thank you all three very much.

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