POLITICAL WRAP

March 12, 1999
		After a heated political debate, the House narrowly approved the Clinton administration's plan to send troops to Kosovo. Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot discuss the debate and the week's other political happenings.

March 11, 1999: Congress debates sending troops to Kosovo March 11, 1999: The controversy over the George Stephanopolous memoir. March 10, 1999: The President's trip to Latin America. March 9, 1999: Nuclear espionage at Los Alamos March 5, 1999: Shields and Gigot on Monica and campaign 2000. March 3, 1999: The Monica interview. Feb. 26, 1999: Shields and Gigot debate the Independent Counsel Law. Feb. 25, 1999: A talk with Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle about his party's legislative agenda. Browse the NewsHour's coverage of the White House, Congress, and Political Wrap.   White House U.S. Senate	MARGARET WARNER: And that's syndicated columnist Mark Shields, and Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot. The president, gentlemen, was on a foreign trip all week, and he was being attacked on foreign policy here at home the whole time from the Republican Congress. Paul, explain the to politics of what happened in the House yesterday. The House Republican leadership said -- insisted on holding a vote, a debate and vote on the Kosovo trip deployment, even though the president and secretary of state personally begged them not to while the negotiations were going on. Then they approved it. I mean what was going on there? What were the political calculations?
	A political debate?
	PAUL GIGOT: Well, I'm not so sure there were a lot of political calculations in any strategic sense, Margaret. I think that what the Republican leadership was responding to is a rank-and-file sentiment that said that the -- we want to have a debate on this. If we're going to dispatch troops to Kosovo, a lot of us don't think it's a good idea, a lot of Republicans don't think, so we want to have a debate on it, and we have a debate on it now, it's better to have it now than if they wait a month after the president's made a decision to send them, when you might not -- and they'll be accused much maybe undermining the troops. So let's have it now -- and the president -- I'm afraid -- just doesn't have a lot of credibility on Capitol Hill to stop that kind of debate. There's no real inclination to give the president the benefit of the doubt on these sorts of things anymore. MARGARET WARNER: How did you read it? MARK SHIELDS: Margaret, the uncharitable might say that the two parties are inconsistent. The less charitable might say they're hypocritical. We went through a period with Republican presidents where the Democratic Congress insisted upon being involved in the decision-making, the policy-making, holding the appropriations strings over foreign policy. And they were attacked. They were attacked by some of the leading editorial pages of the country, 535 secretary of state, can't have that sort of thing. MARGARET WARNER: You mean let the president run things. MARK SHIELDS: Let the president run things and let the president go into Central America and have secret operations, and insurgent wars even without the knowledge of the Congress. Democrats said "no, that's not the way to do it." Now we've got a Democratic president and a Republican Congress and the Republicans are saying no, it has to be fully participatory. I happen to think that the position of the Republicans now and the Democrats then is right. There should be, any time you're sending American fighting men and women into harm's way, you'd better have a full public debate and that debate better include the Congress. But the people who oppose pose that just, not even a generation ago now are all of a sudden converts to democracy. PAUL GIGOT: There's a difference though, Mark, I think in this case. This was a meaningless vote in essence of - I mean, there was no strings attached. This wasn't a vote to pull back troops; this was a sense of the Congress resolution, so there was a sense in which, I mean, they were having it both ways. They were not exactly tying the president's hands. They were sending him a signal more than anything else, and in the end they really didn't send him that much of a signal because the Republican leadership was split on it. You had Tom Delay, who was really one of the instigators of this, voting against the deployment. You had Dick Armey agreeing with him, the Majority Leader, but you had Denny Hastert, the new Speaker, on his first really significant foreign policy vote as Speaker, going with the president. So I don't know no that they're really -- it's not like the old War Powers Act where the Congress in the 80's said, "We have to approve deployment of troops." I think it's a different measure -- a different test that's being made here. MARGARET WARNER: But can the president read this, as he seemed to be doing, even though he fought having the vote, he then seemed to read it as an endorsement of the idea. PAUL GIGOT: Well, I think he can go ahead and deploy -- the Republicans are not saying what the Democrats did not the 80's, they're not saying the president doesn't have the right to do this. It's almost what they're saying is, "we don't trust him to do it right, and we're worried what's going to happen and we want to get on record ahead of him." MARK SHIELDS: What they're really saying is let's showboat a little. I mean, Jack Murtha, the Democrat from Western Pennsylvania, probably is a pro defense member of Congress, certainly a pro defense member of the Democratic House. He said this is down to something very serious, that these people really hate Bill Clinton, and that's at work here -- make no mistake about it. I'm not saying it's dominant, but there's no question that Tom Delay has made himself clear on this subject, that he thinks Bill Clinton is morally unfit to be leader. I don't know who he thinks should be leader in the absence of an elected president, but you had a split within the Republican leadership as Paul pointed out. You had this new Speaker, kind of being cautious, certainly not taking the role that Newt Gingrich would have taken I think in a similar setting, I think Gingrich would have been out front probably with the president, would be my judgment, I could be wrong, but, I mean, he was an ardent, outspoken internationalist. And Denny Hastert seemed timid, uncertain, had let the vote come forward and then made a statement after the vote that we had to be engaged in the world.
	Speaker Hastert's first leadership act.
	MARGARET WARNER: Fairly or not, in the newspapers there was a lot of talk about, "well, this is one of Hastert's first -- Dennis Hastert's kind of first leadership acts." He did seem to back and fill a little - I mean, he sent out the letter saying he had reservations about it -- then he voted for it. PAUL GIGOT: Well, I think he's different than Newt Gingrich in two senses. I think his instincts are internationalist like Newt Gingrich, but there are two things on which he is different; one is I don't think he has the power in the House. If Newt Gingrich had been Speaker, if this debate had happened two years ago with the demand in the rank and file for the debate, Newt Gingrich would have said, "no, let's determine it today." He would have had the influence to say no to Tom Delay. I don't think Denny Hastert really has that clout right now and I think Newt Gingrich - Mark -- I tend to agree with Mark, Newt Gingrich would have been saying, trying to get as many votes as possible, more than the 44 Republicans that he got on behalf of the policy. But I want to say something else. A very dangerous position to be in Washington right now is a Republican internationalist who supports Bill Clinton's policies. Dick Lugar this week is one of them; and he came out and he criticized the president's China policy; he wants to support the president and there are a lot of Republicans who do broadly on this question of American engagement, on this question of American influence in the world, and using American power abroad. But the president doesn't make it easy for you. It's not as if he's out there waving the flag saying, "here's my case for Kosovo. I'm going to spend some political capital. You come in behind me." That's what presidents usually did. Bill Clinton wants to have it easy, he just wants to spring it at the last minute. He's not making the arguments for it and on China, he's given reason after reason for the Republicans to be embarrassed if they end up backing Bill Clinton. MARGARET WARNER: Yes. We should point out-- Mark I want to get your comments on this-- that we're talking this latest Republican sort of unhappiness about the China policy stems from allegations that the administration ignored evidence of Chinese theft of nuclear secrets. So do you think that issue has legs politically?
	The China story.
	MARK SHIELDS: I think it has legs politically, but it also - it's hobbled politically. It's hobbled politically by the very point that Paul made; the Republican -- and both parties, Margaret, in their foreign policy and its trade policy toward China - it is not a foreign policy, it's a trade policy. They call it engagement. Engagement basically is whatever China wants to do, let's not criticize it too loudly. You talk about human rights, my God almighty, you must be xenophobic, you must be - well, don't you want to be in the modern world? You must be with Pat Buchanan or Gary Bauer. That's really the elites of both parties, the elite of the country, economically, intellectually; that's where they are. Let's get along, China's too big, we can't ignore them and let's take out all our heat on Fidel Castro, who's no threat except for Dade County, Florida, politically. So that's really where the situation is. The Republicans are probably more committed to China than are the Democrats. The Democrats have essentially moved there under Bill Clinton and a large segment of the Democrats - MARGARET WARNER: To engagement with China. MARK SHIELDS: To engagement, that's right. MARGARET WARNER: Talking to them. MARK SHIELDS: And uncritical openness toward China. And I think the Republicans -- you have, within the Republican Party you have an emerging primary situation, you have some candidates who are going to raise this issue. The question, Margaret, will be: What kind of a response that evokes because the support for engagement has always been at the elite level and not at the populist level. At the populist level -- and among most voters, rank-and-file voters, there's a great suspicion, even an unfriendliness toward China. MARGARET WARNER: Next week, Paul, Trent Lott, the Senate Majority Leader, going back on Kosovo, is saying he's going to hold a similar debate and vote and try set some limits on a possible deployment of troops. Now, do you think that's just an exercise, or does is that a serious effort by the Senate to - PAUL GIGOT: I don't think it it'll be binding, so in that sense, it's not -- it won't stop the president from doing what he wants. So I think it'll be similar to the House vote, and my suspicion is that the president will probably get more than 50 votes. MARGARET WARNER: Mark, Paul mentioned the sort of post-impeachment distrust of the president, and you did, too, among the Republicans. Is it there, also, among the Democrats? MARK SHIELDS: Oh, it is, there's no question. I don't think it's simply post-impeachment. I mean impeachment certainly is a sense that we walked a mile for you, we stood up, we took some political heat, say some Democrats. But Margaret, it goes all the way back to the 1993 tax bill when president Clinton went to the House Democratic Caucus and said, "you will get a BTU tax in there," and Charlie Wilson of Texas stood up and said, "Mr. president, I'll vote for it but I don't want to t to come out in conference and then have Phil Graham in Texas stand up and say I knocked it out. And he says, "you have my world." Well, of course, it was knocked out, and it was knocked out, and then once it was passed, only with Democratic votes in the 1995 campaign, Bill Clinton to a fund-raiser in Houston said, "some people in this room think I raised taxes too much. I'm one of them." So there's a distrust and a skepticism expressed most recently by Bob Matsui - about as loyal and ardent an internationalist and supporter of the president on the Ways and Means Committee about the Social Security plan. MARGARET WARNER: So, what does this bode for all the big domestic issues in which Congress really does have a role? PAUL GIGOT: Well, I'm not so sure it bodes much for that. I think that the president can still manage to intimidate the Republicans into some kind of deals on domestic issues. But if he has to persuade the country, if he has to move the Republicans -- if he has to move the Republicans on anything difficult in foreign policy, he's going to have to spend more capital persuading the country first because they're not going to give him the benefit of the doubt on anything, and it's not just impeachment. It goes back to Bosnia where the president said in 1995 those troops would be there for a year; they're still there. MARGARET WARNER: But as you're both pointing out, there's really very little Congress can do to hobble him on foreign policy. MARK SHIELDS: I don't know if there is that much they want to did. I mean the criticism is of American use of American force - I mean, Tom Delay, I got a kick out of it, the House Republican whip, he said, we got to be careful about -- all they want to do is air strikes. Well, if you want to have American force in the policy -- as part of the policy, which I think they do, you can't very well say, let's send troops, because I don't see anybody on the Republican side or the Democratic side saying let's send combat troops in, so air power is really the only alternative you have militarily if you're going to be involved in that way. MARGARET WARNER: All right, thank you both very much.