POLITICAL WRAP

May 7, 1999
		Political analysts Mark Shields and Paul Gigot discuss the divided GOP and President Clinton's leadership of NATO.

Strikes in Yugoslavia Coverage May 6, 1999: Four Senators respond to the peace proposal. May 6, 1999: Bill Clinton and German Chancellor Schroeder on the G8 peace plan.. May 6, 1999: The G-8 agrees on an outline of how to end the war in Yugoslavia. . May 3, 1999: The Senate debate on the extent to which the U.S. military should involve itself in Kosovo. April 29, 1999: J.C. Watts and David Bonior square off over Yugoslavia. April 28, 1999: The House vote on a resolution supporting the airstrikes in Yugoslavia is deadlocked April 28, 1999: War on the House floor April 28, 1999: The House votes to limit the ability to send ground troops April 28, 1999: President Clinton on staying united April 27, 1999: Activating the reserves Complete archives of Shields and Gigot.   NATO U.S. House of Representatives U.S. Senate The White House U.S. State Department Serbian Ministry of Information	TERENCE SMITH: For end-of-the-week analysis we turn to our NewsHour regulars, syndicated columnist Mark Shields and Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot. Gentlemen, welcome. Mark, let me ask you first, we saw Secretary Albright describing the shape of a deal here. If that is, in fact, a deal, if it's accepted and it looks like that, how do you think that will be received by the Congress and the American people?
	How will it play to the American public?
	MARK SHIELDS: Well, I think, first of all, Terry, you have -- we have to remind ourselves that we entered Kosovo and that effort not by the advocacy of a political leader, the president or anybody in Congress, but in response to the actions, the criminal brutality of Slobodan Milosevic. That's what -- that's what drove America was a humanitarian impulse and I think an admirable one. So the question is: will a resolution that leaves Slobodan Milosevic essentially untouched, in power, in charge, be satisfactory? And I will say it probably shouldn't be, but I don't think there's anybody who has the credentials, other than Tony Blair, the British prime minister, or John McCain, the senator from Arizona, to make the case against Bill Clinton, because the rest of the political world in this country has essentially waffled on the issue. So, you know, you can't beat somebody with nobody, and while it may be a lousy solution, that may very well be the case. TERENCE SMITH: Paul, what do you think? PAUL GIGOT: Well, substance does matter -- quite apart from who's making the case -- substance does matter, and this has the feel, at least the outlines early, of Dayton II -- that first Dayton Accord, which in 1995, arguably, in Bosnia, helped the president because it helped him kick the can of the issue down past the election -- but it created the circumstances where Milosevic could create mayhem in Kosovo. And so it was a bad deal at the time, and it looks like the president even referred today at his press conference to, well, we want to repeat what happened in Bosnia. I think it's going to be a harder sell this time of credibility. Where I would agree with Mark is that the Republican Congress has already given him a little bit of cover, because some of the -- I mean, the Trent Lott "give peace a chance" -- the Tom DeLay -- new Jesse Jackson wing of the Republican Party, which has basically said, please come home, do a deal, it's going to be hard for them to criticize, but there's a -- there's a big split in the Republican Party now between what I would call the congressional wing and the presidential wing. And McCain and George Bush and Elizabeth Dole have staked out a position where they think they can criticize and can make some political points. MARK SHIELDS: Well, I don't think -- I think McCain can; I think Mrs. Dole can; I'm not sure that Governor Bush came electively and slowly to the position. But the problem is that even today in today's USA Today in an interview with Walter Shapiro, the vice president of the United States said we're talking about the progressive destructive of Milosevic's dictatorship. You know, we're talking about -- we've demonized -- and I think he deserved demonization, if there is such a noun, but he certainly deserved it. He's qualified for it, and at the same time, I just don't know if a resolution that leaves him -- we had World War II, Terry, was about unconditional surrender, and this, it seems right now, to listen to the Secretary of State, who's been stalwart, but is conditional unsurrender. TERENCE SMITH: Certainly a deal short of unconditional. PAUL GIGOT: That's the stalemate.
	The President's visit.
	TERENCE SMITH: Paul, you saw a good deal -- we all did -- of the president this week in Germany, visiting with the refugees. Where do you put him in this picture? Is this a display of presidential leadership of the kind that people have been wanting to see? PAUL GIGOT: I don't think the word "Trumanesque" comes to mind. No, he did a great job of feeling the Kosovars' pain. I mean, he identified with them; he said, you will go home again. But meanwhile, the details of what he's negotiating haven't made a lot of progress in ending that pain. So, I mean, there's a disconnect -- throughout this whole world there's been a disconnect between the president's grand Wilsonian rhetoric. At one point he said, not only you will go home again, but he said, we must stand for the community of every breathing, living person of this continent. He tries to sound Wilsonian, but, again, the means he's willing to use and the political--the political price he is willing to pay for that doesn't match the rhetoric. And I think that was really on display in Europe this week. MARK SHIELDS: I think once we made the decision to go in with NATO, there was no question that -- and that was the only way we would have gone in. Let's be frank about it. I mean, politically that was necessary that it was a NATO action for the United States or I don't think the American electorate or certainly the Congress would have gone along with the administration's move there. Once we made that decision, it did limit - I mean, I think probably in retrospect, we can say that ground troops were never an option. I mean I joined others in criticizing the president for taking it off the table and probably shouldn't have taken it off the table but I don't - TERENCE SMITH: In truth - MARK SHIELDS: -- that was a serious option as long as you had Greece and Italy and other countries that were very unenthusiastic about that and to keep that NATO unity. So I think that has been part of the management problem. But again I think the president did communicate, spent two hours with the refugees, talked to them -- and again his language "it's important the world knows as much as possible about what happened in Kosovo. The world needs to know the truth of Kosovo." Now I mean that sounds like terrible things went on in Kosovo, which we happen to believe did. And is there a disconnect there? Is there some sense of contradiction as to what we're -- we're finessing two of the central issues -- finessing whether the Serbs are going to have to leave first and take all their forces and all their outriders with them and secondly, what is NATO's role? I mean, both of those seem to be finessed. TERENCE SMITH: Paul.
	Holding the Alliance together.
	PAUL GIGOT: Otherwise the Kosovar refugees aren't likely to go back under U.N. auspices of the sort that presided over the massacre of Srebrenica in Bosnia. But let me take up one more point about Greece and Italy. I mean, since when do Greece and Italy run the NATO alliance? They never have in its history. I mean, we're providing something like 65 percent of the military force that's being used in this mission. MARK SHIELDS: I agree. PAUL GIGOT: And yet, the president is letting the people providing the smallest part of the force do about 80 percent of the diplomacy. In fact, he is acceding the main diplomatic role right now to the Germans and to the Russians who the Russians are providing no diplomacy at all. It is presidential leadership that could have made the case. MARK SHIELDS: I don't care who the president was in this case. I mean you had an action here, which I supported and commended and have said so on this broadcast that the president was doing in leading the NATO alliance in there. But I think holding that NATO alliance was a lot tougher to do than I originally estimated. I think there's all kinds of reasons that other presidents as well. I don't think this is on Bill Clinton's watch alone. TERENCE SMITH: All right. Here at home, had the Congress voting early this morning to approve a $13 billion special appropriation to fund this war and quite a few other things. I wonder what you think of that and how you contrast it, Paul, to the votes, the tie vote on supporting the air war just a week ago. PAUL GIGOT: They were different votes. I mean, this was something that the members could say we're really supporting the troops. The other one, which I said last week I thought was a big mistake and a blunder, and I think some Republicans have come around to that view, including the Speaker himself. TERENCE SMITH: Who has decided, in fact, that he was not as forceful as he should have been. PAUL GIGOT: Right. But this was appropriate to spend -- to provide some money. The Republicans took it also as an opportunity no, question about it, to pad some of the accounts for the military to get some of the things around the spending caps that are part of the budget deal of a couple years ago. The President is not going to veto this so we'll add a few things. But, most of them, not all, but most of them are for solid military necessities.
	"Who is really running Congress?"
	TERENCE SMITH: Mark, did we see any congressional leadership in this? MARK SHIELDS: No, we saw 101 Republican flip-flops in the House. I mean, people who had voted to bring the troops home last week against the war, against even supporting the military action, the United States was at risk in and the air assault upon Milosevic, and then turned around to pay double for what they didn't want to support. Now I mean I think this is pushing the outer limits of hypocrisy. I really do. I think it was a scramble back, it was a political vote on their part. They knew that they had the advantage, quite frankly, because let's be blunt about it. As long as the discussion and debate is about national security and national defense, it is an issue that has worked in recent history better for Republicans than it has for Democrats. TERENCE SMITH: Paul with, the flip-flops, who is really running Congress? PAUL GIGOT: I think the prospects for 2000 are running Congress. There is really nobody -- there is no giant figure. There is no great leadership. Both the House and the Senate are all -- both parties -- looking towards the 2000 election. Everything is done with that in mind. So, I mean, on the House side, I think that the strongest Republican is probably Tom DeLay right now. He is the number three leader. But he is the one who led the charge on impeachment. He is the one who led the vote on the air war. And Speaker Hastert is still getting his sea legs. There is no question about that. I think this week a couple of members approached him -- Republicans - and said, you know, if I would have known what you were going to do, which was vote in favor of the air war, I would have changed my vote and it would have carried. They wanted him to exert more leadership. TERENCE SMITH: Okay. There's more to go on that for sure. Thank you both.