POLITICAL WRAP

June 4, 1999
		The Kosovo peace deal may end what was becoming a difficult political situation for President Clinton. The Wall Street Journal's Paul Gigot and The Boston Globe's Tom Oliphant assess who are the deal's winners and losers.

Strikes in Yugoslavia coverage June 3, 1999: Defense Secretary Cohen discusses the peace deal. June 3, 1999: Foreign policy experts react to the peace deal. June 3, 1999: The Serbian-approved peace deal. May 27, 1999: Samuel Berger discusses the Milosevic's indictment. May 27, 1999: Slobodan Milosevic is indicted as a war criminal. May 24, 1999 Opposition to the air strikes grows. May 25, 1999: German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer. May 21, 1999 British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook. Complete NewsHour coverage of Europe   NATO The U.S. Senate The U.S. House of Representatives Office of the Speaker of the House	JIM LEHRER: And to Gigot and Oliphant, Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot and Boston Globe columnist Tom Oliphant, substituting tonight for Mark Shields, who is away.
	Who wins? Who loses?
	Paul, NATO, Milosevic aside, moving closer to home here, if this peace plan, in fact, works, sort through the winners and losers. PAUL GIGOT, Wall Street Journal columnist: Well, American power and the ability to use power is certainly a big winner. The internationalists in both political parties who are willing to use that power are winners. No question, Tony Blair, among the world leaders who I think led NATO in this, is a winner. I would give, I think, some of the winners are those Republicans on the Hill -- Capitol Hill -- and there aren't a lot of them -- but those Republicans like John McCain and Chuck Hagel and Dick Lugar of Indiana, who said from the start, we have an American purpose here, we have to do it right and said, Mr. President, use ground troops. And then there's Bill Clinton, who is a victor here -- no question about it -- but I think a qualified one, and in many respects almost despite himself because he led from the caboose here. He was never willing to use his political capital, risk his political capital on behalf of ground troops in a way that, I think, in the end, when he finally brought those troops up and they supported the KLA as well, which started a ground offensive, that's when Milosevic broke, and I think that maybe some Kosovar lives and a lot of tragedy would have been spared, if he'd have been willing to do that from the beginning, so he's a victor but a qualified one. JIM LEHRER: Well, let's start there and work back, Tom. TOM OLIPHANT, Boston Globe columnist: One of the interesting things I thought about President Clinton is you could actually see him today feeling his oats, which is rare coming so quickly on the heels of the news. What does he do today? He makes a recess appointment of Jim Hormel, a man from San Francisco, who happens to be gay, to be ambassador of Luxembourg. That's in the Senate's face; they haven't scheduled a vote. It's been blocked. The day after it becomes apparent that this is breaking his way, he makes the recess appointment. You can't stop it; it's like an in-your-face gesture. Something else happens today that's interesting and I think underlines what's happened. Jesse Helms, often enough, follows the president, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, finally gives in, sort of, and schedules hearings on the nomination of Dick Holbrooke to be the next ambassador to the United Nations. Now, I don't think this is coincidence. This is Congress deferring to a president who has won one and a president using his power that gets enhanced at a time like this. And I think Paul is exactly right; as long as you don't over-interpret victory, you can define it. Could I throw one other country on the pile, though? Germany, I think, managed its first military involvement abroad since you know what, and did so with great skill in a way that will benefit Germany in the future. JIM LEHRER: In what way? TOM OLIPHANT: Well, it was the first time, I think they provided tremendous -- they were the key -- one of the most important keys to the at least surprising to the "commentariat" here in Washington, resilient - JIM LEHRER: "Commentariat?" TOM OLIPHANT: -- and "punditocracy" which, I think, is one of the losers in this affair. PAUL GIGOT: I can't say those words; I don't know what they mean! TOM OLIPHANT: This was not a good three months for kibitzing around here. Let's face it. But I think that Germany was the key to the extraordinary resilience and determination of the NATO alliance, which, I think, surprised a lot of people who hadn't looked for it that hard. Now, as to politics, I think President Bush in retirement from Kennebunkport this summer would be happy to offer free counseling to anybody who thinks that this is going to determine the identity of our next president. But I think it will affect the primaries at the margins.
	A victory for Albright?
	JIM LEHRER: Let me get to that in a minute, but let's go to the kibitzing. One of the kibitzing points in the last -- when the things began to look a little less terrific on this bombing war -- PAUL GIGOT: Like on the first day. JIM LEHRER: Right. Well, it suddenly became Madeleine Albright's war. PAUL GIGOT: Oh, right. JIM LEHRER: And it was all because of her. And everybody said it was her personality and because she was from Eastern Europe originally and they were ringing it around her - they were around her tying it around her neck. Does victory get tied around her neck if this thing works? PAUL GIGOT: Well, I think Albright has always gotten something of a bum rap because I think -- and the National Security Council and Sandy Berger were as much into this as she ever was. But I think that she deserves credit because in a way it's her vision of what Europe can be that was behind this. I mean she has always thought, as a child of the Holocaust and that memory, that somehow the Balkans could be brought into a civilized Europe. And that motivated this. As far as the execution goes, I think some of the -- more of the fault -- less of the fault lies with her. Maybe she thought it could be done more quickly than it could be. But it's the president, as commander in chief, who has to take the political risk to say this cause which he exalted, remember in great rhetoric, great moral rhetoric, comparing Milosevic to Hitler. If it's that important, he's the one who has to step up and say, then all of America might -- should be applied to it and get it over fast because it's the moral thing to do to get wars over very quickly -- not to hope they do after two and a half months of bombing. TOM OLIPHANT: But there is history here though, and I think the significance of Madeleine Albright -- I mean you go all the way back to the period '93 to '95 when her voice was almost the only voice in this administration arguing that we could with allies, make a difference in this horrible situation in the Balkans. JIM LEHRER: Beginning with Bosnia. TOM OLIPHANT: Exactly. And a celebrated confrontation or two in meetings with Colin Powell when he was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And so I think that record is extremely impressive and at least will give her more of a hearing as she articulates a broader vision of foreign policy. Another name however, and that is the former Republican Senator Bill Cohen who is secretary of defense, and who I think has shown at least that some of the generalizations that you hear from this commentariat in Washington, for example, about air power, are not necessarily true as they are stated and that there are possibilities here that we should have paid more attention to and given more respect to. PAUL GIGOT: I think we have to remember though that this is not over in the sense that Milosevic still survives. And just like Dayton in 1995 was an imperfect agreement that allowed Kosovo to happen later, I think the next American President is going to have to deal with Milosevic somehow unless the Serb people decide that they no longer want him to run them.
	The peace deal's political implications.
	JIM LEHRER: Speaking of the next American president -- that's called a segue, a word we all know. Tom, what does this do to-- here again I won't come back and check you on this, but what do you think it might do to the year 2000 presidential election? TOM OLIPHANT: I think the proper thing to do is concentrate on the primaries. The general election is an entirely different thing. First of all, there is a thing as reflective glory, and Al Gore will benefit from that. I thought it was so interesting, campaigning with him in various times in the last three months, he didn't bring up Kosovo very much. He would answer a question at an appearance if someone asked, but it wasn't something he wanted to talk about. Yesterday in New Hampshire, he couldn't stop talking about it. And, again, I think in a vignette form, you can see a politician reflecting the fact that his position has been enhanced by what has happened. Less notable perhaps, but just as significant potentially, you could hear the sigh of relief from Austin, Texas. This was not a particularly good performance by Governor Bush in handling this issue. It took him time to talk it through, figure it through, think it through. To have this go off the table means that he can go off on his magical mystery tour next week and talk about what he wants to talk about and not be stuck with an issue that made him look like a rookie. PAUL GIGOT: I disagree with that about George Bush, not that he didn't like the victory, but I don't think that he would have minded being able to make the argument on foreign policy against a sitting vice president that Kosovo would have allowed Republicans. I think the sigh of relief, the greatest sigh of relief came from the White House staff. I mean, they saw the president's numbers falling. They saw a terrible decision about ground troops, really the window closing on that issue. This concession came at just the nick of time for Al Gore, who did not want to run in the primaries against Bill Bradley when you could see opposition on the left in the Democratic Party to this war to some of the bombing casualties in Serbia beginning to build. And this removes that issue and really helps Al Gore. JIM LEHRER: But to broaden the issue for a moment, some people have expressed the hope that however Kosovo ended, that it would have ended before the presidential election, the primaries, the whole nine yards, so the issues raised by Kosovo in a broader way, could be at the core of the election. In other words, the candidates would have to come to grips with when we use American power, when we don't use American power. Do we do it from 15,000 feet? Do we -- PAUL GIGOT: Boy, are you an optimistic about American politics. JIM LEHRER: No. I know. Is that really pipe dreaming? TOM OLIPHANT: I think from observation of the campaign thus far, I think it comes from a different direction, and it's more in economics than in military policy. I mean there remains a very vigorous disagreement on the Republican side between say a Gary Bauer, a Pat Buchanan, a Bob Smith and the more internationalist-minded candidates. JIM LEHRER: They were more attuned actually to the very left of the Democratic Party. TOM OLIPHANT: And I think that what has happened in Kosovo means that that discussion is more likely to be on economic terms now than foreign policy security terms.
	A win for the internationalists.
	PAUL GIGOT: This is a decisive win for the internationalists in the Republican Party. This would have been a debacle -- JIM LEHRER: Now, define internationalist in the Republican Party. PAUL GIGOT: It depends on the issue, obviously, but I would define it in this case as somebody who is willing to use American force abroad and perhaps on behalf of strategic interests but also on occasion in humanitarian interests. And it's in the tradition of Reagan, it's in the tradition of Nixon - it's in the tradition -- really the Republican Party changed on this with Eisenhower in the 50's. Remember, it was an international -- it was an isolationist party for a long time coming up to the 20's and 30's and into the 40's and cost them at the presidential level. Ike changed that in the 50's and then Goldwater, the conservative from the West became the anti-Communist candidate and the right moved to an internationalist position. Now with the end of the Cold War the right has split again. There's a faction on the right that has moved back to the old isolationist wing - these are the Buchanan Republicans, the McGovern Republicans, if you will. And they wouldn't appreciate that reference but I think it is apt. You still have the internationalist wing; it's represented right now by George Bush in the presidential side, by Dick Lugar in the Senate, by John McCain on the presidential side. This -- had this been a debacle that some on the right predicted that would have really hurt their cause within the Republican Party. TOM OLIPHANT: You know, true on the left as well. I can't tell you how many times in the last three months you would hear little inklings that Bill Bradley is about to break with Clinton on this. JIM LEHRER: He was going to make a major statement. Right -- TOM OLIPHANT: Then you would just watch him pull back and nothing would happen. The problem here is that there is nothing for the left to come at the centrist Democrats who have won this argument for now on. And on top of that, Bill Bradley now is in the position of having to talk about something. I mean, he benefited from Kosovo to an extent because you could feel the concern on the Democratic side in the back of Gore's crowds. People were worried. Okay? But now without that, Bradley needs something to fill this vacuum between now and November when he has promised to start saying something specific in terms of what he's for. JIM LEHRER: We have to leave it there. Paul, Tom, thank you both much very much.