Online NewsHour: Shields & Gigot -- May 8, 1998

POLITICAL WRAP

May 8, 1998

The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer Transcript

Two developments in the continuing White House drama: Dan Burton created a flap by releasing audio tapes of Webster Hubbell and a judge rejected President Clinton's executive privilege claim. Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot and syndicated columnist Mark Shields discuss the week's events with Jim Lehrer.

A RealAudio version of this segment is available.
NEWSHOUR LINKS:
May 8, 1998:
A report on Dan Burton's release of the Hubbell tapes.
May 6, 1998:
A debate over executive privilege with two former White House counsels.
May 1, 1998:
Our pundits discuss the war of words between Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Clinton.
May 1, 1998:
A report on the week's developments in the Starr Investigation.
April 30, 1998:
The NewsHour's commentators assess the President's press conference.
April 17, 1998:
Our pundits discuss Kenneth Starr, Paula Jones & a poll of government leaders.
Browse the Online NewsHour's coverage of the White House and Shields & Gigot.
OUTSIDE LINKS:
The White House

JIM LEHRER: And to Shields & Gigot, syndicated columnist Mark Shields, Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot.
Paul, your basic view of the Burton-Hubbell tapes flap, sir.
PAUL GIGOT: Well, I think this was the week that the--that Dan Burton imploded. He's the committee chairman. He is--that's a very responsible position. It's the National Football League of politics. And I think he's shown that he isn't--he hasn't been ready to handle the kind of rough and tumble politics that that involves. And he took an opportunity for the Republicans, which was evidence. The tapes, indications of frankly some incriminating statements by Webb Hubbell, and instead of having the focus be on that, he gave the Democrats an opportunity to make the entire focus on him. It's a form of political malpractice, and the Democrats took advantage of it, and that's what your opposition does.
JIM LEHRER: Mark.
Mr. Shields: "I think it makes a mistake to just criticize Dan Burton. I mean, Dan Burton is a creation of the speaker and the speaker knew what he was doing when he chose Dan Burton."

MARK SHIELDS: I think it makes a mistake to just criticize Dan Burton. I mean, Dan Burton is a creation of the speaker and the speaker knew what he was doing when he chose Dan Burton. And the speaker reminds us that he's a history professor. Well, he'd do well to study the works of another history professor. Mike Mansfield of Montana, who was the longest serving Senate Majority leader in the history of the nation--in 1973 faced a very similar problem. He could have sent the Watergate investigation to Ted Kennedy's subcommittee, which is the logical place in judiciary. There were all kinds of senators vying for it. Instead, Mike Mansfield said, no, what I'm going to do is I'm going to appoint Sam Ervin, a nonpartisan judge from North Carolina, and put only on that committee people without national political ambitions. He got the charter and the mandate of the committee approved unanimously by the Senate, so they knew what they were doing and what they were up to. And, you know, Newt Gingrich showed great courage in 1995 by jumping over more senior members to appoint the chairman of commerce and the chairman of appropriation, but he knew that when he was choosing Dan Burton, he was choosing a guy in the words of one of his Republican colleagues to me today said Dan, he's not the brightest bulb on the tree. And Newt knew it going in, and so did all of his colleagues.
PAUL GIGOT: I got to respond to that because the discussion over naming Dan Burton was very hot and heavy within the Republican caucus at the time this congress started. Remember the circumstances of this. It wasn't 1995 when Newt Gingrich, flush with power, was coming in and able within the caucus to name the chairman. He came within two votes, I think, or a couple of votes of being deposed as speaker. He was not in a position to be able to dictate to committee chairmen. He needed all those committee chairmen on his side. And there was a lot of debate; there was some doubt about Burton, but what they said was let's give him an opportunity. Gingrich wasn't in a position to do much about it, so right now what's going to happen is they're acting.
JIM LEHRER: All right. Let's go through some specifics. I mean, just to ask what each of you think, should Burton be--either one way or another step aside as chairman?
MARK SHIELDS: I don't know that you can let Democrats dictate who's chairman if you're the speaker at this stage, but I think what's happening is he's going to have his power stripped. Parts of the investigation are moving over to Bill Thomas's committee, where there's a two to one majority--
JIM LEHRER: So he's toast no matter--no matter--
PAUL GIGOT: I think he's going to be a figurehead and not have substantial control over the investigation, is moving elsewhere.
JIM LEHRER: Do you agree that he's gone?
MARK SHIELDS: Yes. He's absolutely neutered.
JIM LEHRER: What about the basic--
MARK SHIELDS: No pun intended.
JIM LEHRER: I got you. What about the basic point of whether or not these tapes should have been made public in the first place, how do you feel about that?
MARK SHIELDS: Well, it bothered me. I mean, I felt a little bit uneasy, like a voyeur, as I found myself listening to them, watching them. There's no question about it. But I think, Jim, just stepping over that for just a second, they were a gift for the Republicans. But I mean, understand--
JIM LEHRER: In other words, that's Paul's point a while ago.
Mr. Shields: "...the Republicans are the stupid party right now in the judgment of most American people, they're the gang that couldn't shoot straight."

MARK SHIELDS: You understand the stupidity of this man, you really do. They've got sentences using words like roll over and squeeze, and in the middle of it, in the middle of the paragraph, they delete sentences that are remotely favorable to the Clintons. Now, I mean, if they don't know at that point they're slitting their wrists, they're making the party look stupid, the Republicans are the stupid party right now in the judgment of most American people, they're the gang that couldn't shoot straight. Now, they've got to do something to straighten this out. I mean, he was overmatched against Henry Waxman going in. Paul knows that. And everybody else --
JIM LEHRER: Waxman is the ranking minority member of the committee.
MARK SHIELDS: Yes, he is. Yes. And I just--I mean, to me, you know, it's a very, very serious setback to Republicans. The White House has had three bad stories in the past 10 days. I mean, the loss of immunity, Monica Lewinsky, the loss of executive privilege, the Judge ruled against him on that, the release of the tapes, and what's happened? The story is now all Dan Burton and Newt Gingrich and all the rest of it.
JIM LEHRER: Do you see this as a serious matter?
PAUL GIGOT: Well, I think actually it's a temporary thunderstorm. I think it's going to pass. I don't think the Burton committee was frankly turning up all that much information anyway. The real action is still in Starr's investigation, and Starr had access to the tapes all along. And I think that it's perfectly justified in releasing the tapes, given the fact that Webb Hubbell was certainly aware of the conversations that they were being taped, and he had declined to testify before the committee, taken the Fifth Amendment. When you have statements that suggest his mental state, what was going on, I think it's fair to release it, but then you should release it all and let the press decide what they want to print.
JIM LEHRER: What about the general point that Gephardt has made? We didn't have it in the clip, but he made it earlier in the week, that--that Burton, as well as Gingrich, have disqualified themselves to sit in judgment if they should ever have to of President Clinton because they've said all these terrible things about the president--what--going in--
PAUL GIGOT: The context for this whole tape flap was a week ago Dan Burton was, you know, with an Indianapolis newspaper, editorial board, and he allowed a reporter to maneuver him into saying the president was a scumbag. If you're running a committee and you're playing major league politics and you let a reporter maneuver you into that situation, you're not ready to be in that league. That's amateur hour. And in that sense, he has destroyed what credibility--helped destroy what credibility he has, which somebody like Henry Hyde still retains. Now I will say this: Dick Gephardt is going to say if St. Francis of Assisi were running this committee, Dick Gephardt is going to say that's a partisan attack dog, and I would give you the example of the Senate. Fred Thompson, running the Senate Finance Committee, or investigation, tried to be bipartisan. He went out of his way, and he was rewarded with a lot of elbows in the back and in the sides by John Glenn and the Democrats.
MARK SHIELDS: That wouldn't really be bipartisan if St. Francis Assisi were because he is a registered Democrat--
PAUL GIGOT: (laughing) I concede that.
The spotlight turns to Newt Gingrich.

MARK SHIELDS: Paul, you know, mentioned Dan Burton, but let's look at the speaker. The speaker is the high SAT guys, he's the Ph.D. in history. This is a man now who has turned up the rhetorical thermostat, Jim, to the point where it isn't allegations, it isn't a scandal. He has issued a directive that you're only to refer to them as crimes. Crimes.
JIM LEHRER: You saw that in the Republican caucus.
MARK SHIELDS: Right. He referred to crimes. He's become in one fell swoop--he's judge--he's jury--he's prosecutor--he's made the indictment--he's delivered the verdict. Now, I mean, do you think he sacrificed the right to sit there in judgment? I mean, he's prejudged.
JIM LEHRER: If it should come to that.
MARK SHIELDS: He's prejudged.
PAUL GIGOT: I think he's gone too far when he has gotten into the specifics of the Webb Hubbell example. He was on much stronger ground when he said look, we're going to stick to cooperating with the institutions of congress and the judiciary, Ken Starr, which the White House has not. Massive resistance has been their policy. And this--we have to abide by the rule of law. So I think that when he goes beyond that, he begins to get into delicate political territory.
The executive privilege decision: a major setback?

JIM LEHRER: Mark, you mentioned the executive privilege decision. It went against the president as it relates to Bruce Lindsey and Sidney Blumenthal, two of his aides. Is that a major setback?
MARK SHIELDS: Yes, it is a major setback, and I thought the Washington Post editorial made sense when they said anybody who talks about executive privilege as the president has weakens any claim for it by offering frivolous and flimsy arguments behind it. And I don't think there's any question, it was intended as a delay tactic. They have kept the political people out of the decision--and their appeal. And they're keeping it on just sort of legalistic grounds, and the political people have told them very bluntly don't, don't--
JIM LEHRER: Don't appeal, stop it right?
PAUL GIGOT: John Hugh of the University of Berkeley Law School counted up privilege claims by this White House before Congress and the courts, compared to the Bush, Reagan, Ford, and Carter presidencies combined, and there are as many. This White House files privilege claims at the drop of the hat. And the president, and this is the thing that in some respects is the most irritating about it, he says, "I don't know anything about that." That's those lawyers over there. The Supreme Court has clearly judged that only a president can file a claim of privilege, so he knows exactly what's going on.
JIM LEHRER: Do you agree with Mark, that delay is probably what's behind this?
PAUL GIGOT: Sure. I mean, if they can push this thing off, beyond November, they can turn 12 House seats, they can get Newt Gingrich out of the speaker's chair and Henry Hyde out of the judiciary chair, man, the political vulnerability sure changes.
MARK SHIELDS: It is absolutely remarkable--I mean--every Republican I've talked to this week that's involved in campaigns is melancholy about November. Now, we're in the sixth year of a presidential term, where historically presidents have suffered massive defeats in House races, across the board. Ronald Reagan lost the Senate in his sixth year; Dwight Eisenhower got wiped out in the Senate in his sixth year, lost the House and continued to lose the House. And I got to tell you, right now there is a strange sort of giddy optimism among Democrats, which history does not justify. They're under siege, short of three people, believe the president had an illicit sexual relationship with a White House intern and lied about it under oath, and yet he's soaring in the polls and Democrats are ahead of Republicans. So, Jim, it is an absolutely uncharted political time.
JIM LEHRER: Before we go, the Middle East, Newt Gingrich and some Democrats--not just Republicans--criticized the president for pressuring Israel. How do you read the politics on that?
PAUL GIGOT: I think that Congresses have always meddled in foreign policy like this, and what they're doing is they're trying to counter balance what they think is unjustifiable pressure on the Israeli government.
JIM LEHRER: This is to accept a U.S. proposal for 13 percent withdrawal from the West Bank before they come here on Monday for these peace talks, which may or may not come off?
PAUL GIGOT: Yes. Prime Minister Netanyahu, you'd better not come here unless you agree to that proposal.
JIM LEHRER: That's right.
Mr. Gigot: "... you have the First Lady practicing foreign policy without a license, saying, well, I'm for a Palestinian state, which is something that has--you know, in foreign policy circles is taboo and probably complicates the job of the president getting an agreement."

PAUL GIGOT: And I talked to Howard Berman, a California Democrat, about that today, and he said that's a horrible precedent to do to an ally because it gives the--it gives the Arabs the impression that they don't need to make any concessions because the United States will deliver, and then you have the First Lady practicing foreign policy without a license, saying, well, I'm for a Palestinian state, which is something that has--you know, in foreign policy circles is taboo and probably complicates the job of the president getting an agreement.
JIM LEHRER: What do you think of this?
MARK SHIELDS: What do--
JIM LEHRER: Both of them.
MARK SHIELDS: Both of them. I think the First Lady spread the ugly truth and did it at exactly the wrong time. I mean, most people, thoughtful people, acknowledge that the Palestinians will eventually have their own state where they can educate their own children, maintain their own law. But this certainly was a complicating time in which to raise that issue. As far as Israel, Jim, there's still a broad based American popular support for Israel, there's no doubt about it, but the relationship has changed. Israel was the embattled underdog. It was David against the Arab Goliath, and the relationship with the Palestinians is different. And I'll tell you this: Israeli leaders have been almost revered in this country, most recently Yitzhak Rabin, whether it's David Ben-Gurion, or Golda Meir, or even Menachem Begin, when he met with Anwar Sadat--Netanyahu does not fit that. Netanyahu does not command widespread either respect or affection in this country, and I think it hurts Israel's cause.
JIM LEHRER: Okay. We have to leave it there. Gentlemen, thank you both very much.

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