POLITICAL WRAP

July 16, 1999
		Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot and Boston Globe columnist Tom Oliphant discuss presidential campaign fundraising and the health care debate.

Online Forum: What issues do you think should shape Election 2000? A NewsHour special emphasis on the Election 2000 issues. July 15, 1999: The Senate votes down provision to sue HMO's July 15, 1999: Presidential candidates reveal their fundrasing totals July 6, 1999: A look at the First Lady's possible campaign for the Senate. July 2, 1999: Shields & Gigot discuss discuss Campaign 2000 and the congressional battles of the budget surplus. Browse the NewsHour's Shields & Gigot index.	TERENCE SMITH: That's Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot and Boston Globe columnist Tom Oliphant, sitting in for Mark Shields, who is away tonight. Gentlemen, welcome to you both. Let's turn to the politics of Patients' Bill of Rights. There was a great deal of this in the Senate this week. Were there political winners and losers, Paul? PAUL GIGOT: Well, the Republicans in the Senate think they came out the winners and I think they have reason to think that, Terry. Contrast their behavior this week with what they did on gun control a couple months ago where Ted Kennedy really routed the majority on that issue. This time they took an issue where Democrats are strong, health care, stronger than Republicans, but they pursued the strategy and acted like a majority. TERENCE SMITH: And it held. PAUL GIGOT: Sure. They put together a bill that joined Phil Gramm, conservative free market right, Olympia Snowe of Maine as well. They kept united, they attacked the Democratic plan for the weaknesses -- for the ability to sue plans they thought would help the trial lawyers, for raising costs, they went after it, and they ended up staying united and prevailing. So, I think they come out of this more confident that they've neutralized what might have been an issue that could have been used against them. TERENCE SMITH: Tom, what do you think? TOM OLIPHANT: I think one reason that that may be so, however, though, is that this all stops in the Senate. That bill could not pass the House in a million years. TERENCE SMITH: And the President has promised to veto it. TOM OLIPHANT: And I'm not sure anything can pass the House at the moment because the Republicans are so divided. I think the real winner here was the status quo in health care no matter from which perspective you look at it. And I think the big loser was each party. The dirty little secret last night on the Senate floor was that there was an alternative to these two competing bills. It would have passed by a mile. Neither side would let it come to a vote because they preferred the politics of it. And if there were ever a leader for something like a Reform Party, I would pick a thing like last night and say that's an example of how these parties know how to fight, but they can't govern.
	Presidential fundraising
	TERENCE SMITH: The issue rather than the bill. Let's turn to the presidential political landscape because that changed this week. John Kasich became the first of the Republican contenders to drop out. What's the significance of that? PAUL GIGOT: It's fascinating, Terry. I mean, you have a presidential campaign where people are dropping out before most of the voters are even paying any attention, which goes to show you how front-loaded this whole process is. John Kasich, I think, is a victim of a couple of things. One is the Bush juggernaut sucked up money, oxygen from so much of the Republican Party financial elites, he wasn't able to raise very much. And the other thing was that he was a member of Congress -- and he was a member of Congress in a year when I think the Republican electorate is not looking for a champion from Congress. This is not like 1996, where you had that Gingrich and Dole enthusiasm, that this was a reform agent. There is a lot of frustration with Congress now on the part of the Republican grass roots. And they are looking for a governor, they're looking for somebody from outside. And I think John Kasich as a member of Congress with significant achievements in Congress; nonetheless this was not the year where he could carry the banner. TERENCE SMITH: Wrong man from the wrong place? PAUL GIGOT: At the wrong time. He's 47. He's resigning from Congress after a long career in Congress. So he's got some political - he got out early enough so he might hold out hope by endorsing George Bush. He could be a Vice Presidential pick. TOM OLIPHANT: Or a budget director.
	The Iowa Straw Poll
	TERENCE SMITH: Paul, it's obvious a narrowing of the field, there's another moment for that, I suppose coming up next month in Ames, Iowa, the Straw Poll. Is it therefore more significant this year? TOM OLIPHANT: What I think - Kasich's significance to me is just as a harbinger. I don't think he played in the game at all. He made no intellectual contribution to the campaign. There was no discernible impact on the electorate or anything else you could measure. If he wasn't there, how can you say it was significant that he didn't run? But I do think he is a harbinger of death, and death I think awaits as many as three of these candidates out there in Ames next month. I think - TERENCE SMITH: Death by fundraising? TOM OLIPHANT: Death partly by fundraising, partly by simply inability to show any significant support within Iowa for something that has become much are more of a test of strength than that silly one four years ago when people were coming from Texas and other places to "participate." And somebody on the social right like Pat Buchanan, more likely than Gary Bauer, is in trouble. Lamar Alexander himself is on life support both financially and politically. And it would not surprise me if this is make or break for Dan Quayle, so the real significance of Kasich, I think, is that this thinning or winnowing of the field is about to happen in a much more significant way. TERENCE SMITH: Do you agree with that, Paul? PAUL GIGOT: I do. I mean, I think it was Pat Buchanan who used the phrase the grim reaper. We like Pat in the race for those good phrases. TERENCE SMITH: Well, the midyear campaign fundraising statistics came out this week. And George Bush has not only raised a remarkable amount of money, but he also announced this week that he would not accept federal matching funds in the primary season. What do you make of that? PAUL GIGOT: I think it's enormously significant. It means, for example, in Iowa, I think the limit, the campaign limit spending limit is about $1.3 million if you adhere to the federal standards. He doesn't have to play by that rule. TERENCE SMITH: Neither he nor Steve Forbes. PAUL GIGOT: It means that they can spend whatever it takes. I think you're going to see them spend a lot even on the straw poll by entertaining people and steaks and that sort of thing. So that's very significant. The other thing it means, I think, is that George Bush can go mano a mano or dollar for dollar with Steve Forbes in Iowa and in other states in a way that Bob Dole couldn't in 1996. And Steve Forbes could frame the issue in a state like Arizona, which he'd won, in a way that now George Bush now can answer 30-second TV ad with a 30-second TV ad.
	Campaign finance system
	TERENCE SMITH: What does it do to the campaign finance system? TOM OLIPHANT: I think the first thing that needs to be observed about the decision by Governor Bush, is that it is a historical moment. This means that the last shred of the Watergate financial reforms so-called of 1974 is effectively gutted. If you do not have spending limits operating as a check in the campaigns, then they are gone, possibly even for good. I've noticed in some of the reactions from the left this week, an unfortunate tendency I think to suggest that because Bush is taking this step, that therefore there's something corrupt about his campaign. There isn't. I mean, we can look at all the people who give to his campaign. There is certainly no evidence to date of anything untoward. But down the road, without the limits that that system imposed, and it did work for a while, the temptation, the need to accumulate huge amounts of cash is usually the thing that precedes scandal. Now in the case of Bush's campaign, I think the worst thing that would happen to him is if indeed he is forced to match Forbes dollar for dollar because the importance of that $30 million or whatever it is that he had on hand as of June 30th is for later, if he can clinch the nomination early, something to use between the Spring and the conventions. If he uses it in one of these air wars in Iowa, New Hampshire, Arizona, South Carolina, he might as well be throwing it out the window. PAUL GIGOT: I disagree with Tom on one point about the Watergate reforms. I agree that they are the death knell. But I think it's the death knell because the seeds of its own destruction were in those reforms. And that is the $1,000 contribution limit and the spending limits. That $1,000 limit, which hasn't been adjusted for inflation, that's the most one individual donor can give any candidate. What they do is they benefit two kinds of people: The well-healed millionaires who can spend their own money, Steve Forbes, the well known, George Bush; the people with networks, with donor lists. They don't help the John McCains ironically who wants to extend these limits to other areas. It doesn't help Gary Bauer; it doesn't help a lot of the people. They've had the ironic effect of reducing political competition. TOM OLIPHANT: I think that's a fair point. The one thing I'd say, don't ever forget that the absence of money early on never prevented Pat Buchanan from doing very, very well in Iowa and New Hampshire the last two times. And the presence of money, say Steve Forbes, never gets you past an electorate that doesn't think you're a serious player. TERENCE SMITH: With this Phil Gramm and others. TOM OLIPHANT: You want to never forget -- this game is sequential. Iowa, New Hampshire, Arizona, South Carolina, you have to win as you go along. And early on there is till a chance for an under-funded candidate to break through.
	Bradley vs. Gore
	TERENCE SMITH: Let me take you both to the Democratic side because there were numbers that came out for Al Gore and for Bill Bradley that were very large also. Al Gore has raised a lot of money and spent a lot of money. And Bill Bradley has almost as much on hand. What do the two of you make of this? TOM OLIPHANT: Of all the things that Gore has done or things that have not gone well for him so far this year, I think this is the biggest embarrassment of all by a country mile - to spend that amount -- he spent almost a million dollars more than Governor Bush did, which, I think, says it all, including really preposterous amounts arranging some of his fund-raisers. I mean, George Bush can get $1,000 from a guy for a glass of ice water and a handshake. Gore is - you know -- arranging dinners with dishes I've never heard of before. And I think the other embarrassment is the way Bradley raised his money. If you call the Bradley campaign today, they say sorry, we've raised 11 million dollars, and we're all at the Jersey shore this weekend. But Bradley out raised Gore in New York, he out raised Gore in California. And eyebrows twitch when that happens. TERENCE SMITH: Final word. Does that make it a real race on the Democratic side? PAUL GIGOT: I think it means that Bill Bradley has won the first primary, which is the money primary. I mean, he took on a sitting Vice President - right -- with all of those resources, backing of the President and six months into the year he's got almost as much money on hand. That means that within the Democratic establishment and elites that he has -- there is real doubt about Al Gore and it's a race. TERENCE SMITH: Not with the people. PAUL GIGOT: Right. TERENCE SMITH: Thank you both very much.