POLITICAL WRAP

May 26, 2000
		Boston Globe columnist Tom Oliphant and Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot talk about the week in politics.

China Links: The China Trade Debate Full NewsHour China Coverage Q&A: PNTR Debate: * Free Trade * Human Rights * Labor Dec. 1, 1999: A discussion on China, trade and democracy Nov. 18, 1999: An interview with U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky Nov. 15, 1999: A discussion on the U.S.-China Trade deal. July 30, 1999: Beijing cracks down on the meditation group Falun Gong. Election Links: Online Special: Election 2000 Online Special: An Interview with George W. Bush Online Special: An Interview with Al Gore May 12, 2000: Shields & Gigot on China trade, George Bush and Rudy Guiliani May 5, 2000: Shields & Gigot on gun control and Social Security proposals April 28, 2000: Shields & Gigot on the Microsoft case, the presidential race March 7, 2000: Shields & Gigot discuss Super Tuesday results. Special Emphasis Debating the Election 2000 agenda Browse the NewsHour's coverage of politics and campaigns     The AFL-CIO The Cato Institute Human Rights Watch The Teamsters The United States-China Business Council The White House China Trade Relations Working Group The House Democratic Leader	MARGARET WARNER: And we get that analysis from Gigot and Oliphant; that's Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot, and Boston Globe columnist Tom Oliphant. Mark Shields is off tonight. All right, first, the China trade bill vote. This was supposed to be a cliff hanger. Tom, it won with a 40-vote margin. What happened? TOM OLIPHANT: I think down the stretch, Margaret, that three very important trends were underestimated by some of the people caught in the heat of this battle. The most important one, I think, turned out to be the complete absence of a competing vision from the opponents of this of a relationship with China that did not include normal trading deals. That failure made it possible to portray this as a kind of security issue, because you could conjure up a notion of a relationship with China in real danger of being subject to disintegration at times. Secondly, I thought that this commission that's going to monitor Chinese behavior... You know, on the floor one of the opponents, Dennis Kucinich of Ohio actually waved a fig leaf to describe this. But a lot of the people who used it as a peg to hang their vote on, take it seriously and a lot of activists in human rights and environmental rights and labor rights believe it has a chance to do some good. Finally, there were African American and Hispanic votes for this that came late, and I think in part were the result of an agreement that was approved earlier this spring for essentially a free trading relationship with most of Africa and much of the Caribbean. There's a kind of open market momentum in Congress today that the opponents simply got overwhelmed by. PAUL GIGOT: Presidential leadership. When a President wants something, he can put a lot behind it. Republicans acted consistent with their principles and put aside whatever animus they had against Bill Clinton to deliver 164 votes, three out of every four of their members, Tom DeLay. I think the President will wait a few hours before he calls them isolationists. And the Democrats in the House, Richard Gephardt did a very deft if somewhat calculating thing in this. He was playing both sides of the street. Publicly he was opposed. Privately he wanted it to pass because he didn't want the blame for this failure to come down on the heads of the Democrats in Congress, which he felt it would do if it failed. He was right about that. He winked when one of those prominent African Americans, Charlie Rangel, the ranking Democrats on Ways and Means -- who wants to be chairman more than he wants to get up tomorrow -- when he came out in favor of it, he had the silent approval of Dick Gephardt because they wanted this thing. They knew that the business money would dry up if it didn't pass. President Clinton would be humiliated. They want him to carry some arguments for them later. So you're left with who's opposed to this? Labor. Labor is conflicted, too, because labor wants to beat Republicans in November more than it wants to punish Democrats for this vote.
	A relationship with trade
	MARGARET WARNER: But despite all this, Tom, and despite the fact that the President spent a lot of capital and time on this, he still only got a third of the Democrats. I mean he spent eight years trying to get Democrats to have a new relationship with trade. Is the split really that bad in the party? TOM OLIPHANT: Well, it was, as of Wednesday when the vote was taken. I'm not sure what happens now because this was a watershed vote. I mean the horse is out of the barn now. We're going to have this relationship with China. Also I think behind this there was a lot more intensity among leadership officials in these interest groups I think than there was at the grass roots level. MARGARET WARNER: Including labor. TOM OLIPHANT: In fact, one of the dirty little polling secrets in this controversy is that opinion in union families in the polls was not really any different than opinion in non-union families. As a result, I don't think there was any grass roots momentum behind the opposition. There is some of it there. There is a great deal of anger here. There is a great deal of conservative grass roots anger about having this kind of relationship with a communist country. But this got overwhelmed by, I think, a clear momentum in Congress, and in the country toward open markets that I think is only going to grow in the years ahead. MARGARET WARNER: So, you don't think that either Vice President Gore or these other 73 Democrats are going to pay any price in terms of diminished labor support in November? PAUL GIGOT: Minimal. And I think that's because of this conflicted labor agenda. I mean John Sweeney, the head of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. basically said about Al Gore basically, we know he had to be for this. This is Bill Clinton's bill, but he really didn't do anything for it. MARGARET WARNER: It's almost as if he wasn't part of it at all. PAUL GIGOT: He didn't try. He was for it. And it's true. Gore was on this one, sort of Marcel Marceau. You had to read his lips to know he was for it. There is on trade a real split in the Democratic Party on this. I don't think you can cover this up, certainly at the activist level there is a real division I think that's as deep in many ways as abortion is on the Republican side. You saw that, President Clinton has changed his party in many ways. He has brought his party over on crime, able to bring it on welfare and some other things. On trade, he only did get one out of three Democrats in the House. So there still is a fundamental split. And I think that the ambivalence within the Democratic Party was reflected in Al Gore's problems in dealing with this. TOM OLIPHANT: The one thing we don't know, the one secret list that's left, is which Democrats got dispensation from the White House to vote no who would have been there had it been very close. I suspect you got to half a dozen or so, even more. MARGARET WARNER: In the President's pocket if he needs it. PAUL GIGOT: Proof of that, if you were watching the vote on television, as soon as it got to the majority, six or eight Democrats were right in the "no" category.
	Why not Cuba?
	MARGARET WARNER: Sending a press release out. Now, Tom, you said there is a momentum behind free trade. One of the arguments the President made and we had a discussion we had last night was freer trade with China will mean more freedom in China so some members are saying "why not Cuba?" And there is this little provision that has been tacked on to an agricultural appropriations bill. Is that going anywhere? TOM OLIPHANT: Margaret, it had to be, I mean, the House leadership had to call a halt to proceedings this week about that even though this procedural vote they were looking for was the kind of thing where party loyalty rules and Speaker Hastert should have been able to prevail. I'm told that they would have lost by as much as 290 votes on this. MARGARET WARNER: Just explain. What you're saying is that the leadership was trying to scuttle this without a floor vote. TOM OLIPHANT: To get it yanked out of the bill with a point of order. MARGARET WARNER: They could not succeed. TOM OLIPHANT: They could not succeed, and as a result they need this holiday weekend. And I think it is quite clear that there are now conservatives who, having said this about China, cannot miss the logic about Cuba. And much more importantly in that Democratic group we were just talking about, there are literally a couple dozen liberals who, for some reason, couldn't bring themselves to support trade with China, who support it with Cuba. And as a result, you've got one of the weirdest coalitions in a long time. This almost happened last year, you know. This passed the Senate a year ago, there were the votes were overwhelming. And now, unless knees are broken and thumbs are broken, it is quite possible that in a week or so this could happen. Now this is not lifting the embargo entirely. This lifts with regard to food and medicine. MARGARET WARNER: Which is one reason why agricultural interests are supporting it and big drug companies. TOM OLIPHANT: Pharmaceuticals. PAUL GIGOT: And there was momentum behind this after the pope's visit where the TV cameras were allowed and you saw how horrible life is in Cuba for average people. But the politics in the wake of the Elian Gonzalez thing, domestic policies in the United States is not going to allow a greater lift of the embargo. And there are some differences. Fidel Castro has not made anywhere close to the kind of economic reforms in allowing of contracts and private ownership and stock markets of the kind that have broken out in China and that have the sanction of the government in China. So you really are dealing purely as a business person with a government entity in Cuba. You are not doing that right now with everybody in China. So it's a different... I mean, if Castro made more attempts to open his society economically, he would have a better argument in this country. MARGARET WARNER: But you think the Elian Gonzalez case has hardened attitudes against this? PAUL GIGOT: Yes, I do. TOM OLIPHANT: I think Paul is right with many members. But what is so weird about this issue is that I think it has had the opposite effect on many others, on some of what are perceived as excesses in the Cuban-American community in Florida during that incident have produced a discernible backlash. MARGARET WARNER: Backlash against the Cuban-Miami community and its interests? TOM OLIPHANT: Very much so.
	Raising soft money
	MARGARET WARNER: Also this week there was a gala fund-raiser that the Democratic National Committee held and it raised... I think the top ticket went for $500,000. And I know you were there, but in any event, it raised to public attention how much soft money these parties are raising this year. They're already double the rate than in '96, they're already at $160 million combined, I think they are going to be at $500 million again, double '96. We saw a lot of ads in 1996. What is this money needed for? What are they going to do with it? TOM OLIPHANT: The stockpiling of the money... This event was so-- pardon me-- obscene, it dwarfed as a news event a $14 million fund-raiser that the Republicans had for their committee. This is almost like before World War I, Margaret, where the countries are amassing all these armaments. And yet so far the shooting hasn't started. This is for television advertising. The Republicans and the Democrats, the Bush campaign and Gore campaign have found in their research consistently as I do anecdotally, that people don't want this campaign to begin. They want the candidates to basically shut up for a while so they can have some peace and quiet. As a result, there has been much less spending in the Spring of 2000 even though there has been twice as much fund-raising. At some point I'm told the Gore campaign is going to begin an image-building positive campaign with some party money. The Republicans may respond with some of their Buddhist Temple footage. But the only evidence I'm aware of is the public still does not want this campaign to be rammed down their throats on television. MARGARET WARNER: When it starts then, it is going to be much more concentrated. PAUL GIGOT: I suppose it will. But hey, that's what elections are for. I don't see anything obscene about Vice President Gore and Bill Clinton raising a lot of money. I mean that's what you do. We live in a society where most people get their messages over the broadcast media. That's expensive. You got to have cash. What this fund-raiser shows is how phony the distinction is becoming between hard and soft money and these limitations. We ought to take them all down and let people donate money and just be aware of, by posting on the Internet or something, those people who are doing it and how much they're giving. Because you've got these laws that are now being violated in the breach. They don't mean anything. But hey, spend. Fine by me. MARGARET WARNER: Got to leave it there. Have a great weekend both of you.