POLITICAL WRAP

November 4, 1998
	Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot discuss the winners and losers of this year's elections.

Nov. 4, 1998: Senators McConnell and Torricelli discuss election results. Oct. 30, 1998: Shields and Gigot discuss the campaign ads of the upcoming election. Oct. 23, 1998: Shields and Gigot discuss the Middle East peace agreement. Oct. 16, 1998: Paul Gigot and Mark Shields discuss the winners and losers of $500 billion budget agreement. Oct. 9, 1998: Pundits Shields and Gigot on the impeachment vote and the budget battle Oct. 2, 1998: Shields and Gigot discuss the House's decision to release more documents on the Clinton-Lewinsky matter. Sept. 18, 1998: Shields and Gigot analyze the partisan struggle over the release of grand jury evidence. June 18, 1998: Five months from election day, the mid-term congressional races are beginning to take shape. Browse the NewsHour's coverage of Election '98 and Shields & Gigot	JIM LEHRER: And now to Shields and Gigot, syndicated columnist Mark Shields, Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot. Gentlemen, you've heard what has just been said on this program. You've had all day to read and to think about all of this. Is there a Gigot theory about what happened yesterday? PAUL GIGOT: Big cosmic overview. JIM LEHRER: Absolutely. That is your role tonight, gentlemen. Play it. PAUL GIGOT: I thought it was to shoot the wounded, Jim. JIM LEHRER: We'll get to that in a minute. PAUL GIGOT: I think Republicans were out-thought and out-fought. The - on the strategy of the campaign Democrats went underground in the last couple of weeks. They fought through turnout, direct mail, phone banks, get-out-the-vote campaigns, and it worked beautifully. They changed the nature of this electorate, as Andy Kohut and others said. They made it a much more-an electorate with a lot more Democrats. And then on issues they had some, and the Republicans really in the end didn't give their people a reason to vote, other than put a check on Bill Clinton. Democrats had theme and they had tactics, and it worked for them. JIM LEHRER: The Shields overview, please. MARK SHIELDS: Well, to borrow from Professor Peter Hart, or expand a little bit, the Democrats used a ground attack. The Republicans used an air attack. I mean, the Republicans made the mistake of going on the air and really nationalizing the race at the end, and making it sort of a referendum on Bill Clinton, whereas, Democrats went the old way, the old-fashioned way. They did it the Smith Barney, knocking on doors, calling up people on the phone. But you can't do that, Jim. It's not simply mechanic - unless there is a message. And the Democrats, I think it's fair to say, had a message, while not as all encompassing or over-arching, still had a saliency to voters in 1998. And to that I would add that in the two states where the anti-Clinton campaign was most vocal and most visible, North Carolina -where the incumbent Republican Senator Lauch Faircloth used its strenuously against his Democratic challenger John Edwards - and in South Carolina, where Republicans used it against Fritz Hollings, the long-term Democratic incumbent senator, in both cases it boomeranged. Those are very anti-Clinton states, and that tactic didn't work. JIM LEHRER: All right. Well, let's move from these results to what the possible impact of it may be. First, on the overriding question of impeachment, what is your analysis, Paul, of what these results add up to as a possible impact?
	Elections impact
	PAUL GIGOT: They make impeachment less likely, probably substantially less likely. The first thing it does is it reassures Democrats. The biggest payoff for Bill Clinton has always been his own party. Would they see him after this election that he had hurt them? And I think the lesson the Democrats - JIM LEHRER: And that they might turn on him because of that. PAUL GIGOT: That's right and say, well, we can't have him leading our party in to 2000. And I think the lesson they'll draw is, well, he didn't hurt us, and they'll draw another lesson - we helped him. By getting our vote out and the base Democratic vote, a lot of Democrats are going to say, you know, our base likes him, and now Bill Clinton owes us, and they're going to think we can get something out of him. We can get it on Social Security; we can get it on trade; we can get it on labor law reform. He's going to owe us. So they're going to be calling in a few chips because really this is - the Democratic base victory in many ways. MARK SHIELDS: Well, I'd take a little bit different tack. I'd say that every race that was in play a week ago - think about it - the North Carolina Senate race, the South Carolina Senate race - the Wisconsin Senate race, the New York Senate race- JIM LEHRER: California's - MARK SHIELDS: Senate race. Nevada's Senate race. Every single race the Democrats won, with the exception of Kentucky, which is subject to recount. I mean, so - the Republican attack in the last week - which was sort of the central point - a centerpiece - the strategy of the last week - boomeranged, and I think the recriminations are going to be enormous. The Democrats - JIM LEHRER: Against whom? MARK SHIELDS: Against the Republican Party. Don't forget, here's what the Republican leadership said at the end of the session, and Paul made this point on this very broadcast, and that is, we'll take this budget deal, we'll just get through; we'll get through, don't you worry about it; it's okay, it isn't what we want, but we're going to come back with 25 or 30 more members, and then we'll be able to do everything we want. Okay. Now, instead of that, they're coming back with fewer. Before, 12 members of the House - 12 members of the House - because there are only 220 - 228 Republicans - could hold the leadership hostage. Now, six can. I mean, so it's an impossible, impossible task. I think Paul is right about the Democrats, but the Democrats have been through the recrimination. They've been through the charges - betrayal and all the rest of it, and what Clinton did to us and all of that. Now you're going to see it on the Republican side. Already today Steve Forbes, presidential candidate, saying, mushy-mouthed, middle-of-the-road stuff doesn't work, and we'll hear more of that. JIM LEHRER: Be careful when Shields starts quoting you, Paul. PAUL GIGOT: That's always dangerous. But he got it right. (laughter) I was in a meeting with Newt Gingrich right after the budget deal closed, there were about half dozen reporters, and one of them asked pointedly, well, are you aware that you don't have enough message for your base to get out, and he said, in a normal year, I would be, I'm not this year, because they're all ready to go out because of Bill Clinton. So he wanted - JIM LEHRER: Now, where did he get that idea? Where did that come from? PAUL GIGOT: Well, their polling showed a marked support in turnout intensity for Republicans all year long, and that was real; that was not phony. But what I think happened - I disagree with Mark a little bit - I don't think those ads - the message in those ads that they ran last week were the mistake. The fact is the mistake probably was that they were run as television ads, and they created a big debate about it, and that gave the Democrats a motive - JIM LEHRER: Very few people actually saw the ads, but they read the stories and heard the discussions about the ads. PAUL GIGOT: And that helped the Democrats make their case for turnout. They would have been much better off if that had been put in direct mail or in phone calls to Republicans, who were more inclined to receive it. JIM LEHRER: Okay. I want to go back to the specific question, Mark, that I asked Paul, which is put this now into an impeachment context, these results.
	Impeachment in context
	MARK SHIELDS: Sure. I think the chances are less, I think right now. What you had - JIM LEHRER: In the House- MARK SHIELDS: In the House - JIM LEHRER: The chances - there will be hearings but there won't be - you don't think the House will vote to impeach the President? MARK SHIELDS: Henry Hyde, the chairman of the committee, the House Judiciary Committee, for whom I have already expressed considerable respect, has said time and again, Jim, he does not want to have a partisan bill of impeachment. And so that meant he needed Democratic votes and he needed - I think the chances of Democratic cooperation have probably been minimized by the election returns. I think furthermore there's going to be an intense urge and pressure on those very people who are upset at the budget deal, upset at papering over differences - is going to say, now, look it, we've got to stick on this issue, and at the same time, I think the cooler or more pragmatic heads are going to say, we've got to resolve this some way, and, boy, Gerry Ford's solution looks pretty damned good right now. President Ford - the op-ed page - let's have a censure - now the problem for the Democrats is I don't know if Bill Clinton is ready for a censure. I think Bill Clinton could read these election returns as an innocent verdict, and that's one fear and apprehension Democrats have. JIM LEHRER: Okay. Back to the Republicans on the leader. There has been a lot of speculation today that the leadership - Margaret asked Senator McConnell about it - and he said I can't talk about the House - Sen. Lott is in fine shape. What's your reading of the state of the Republican leadership as a result of this?
	The Republican leadership
	PAUL GIGOT: I don't think either leadership is in fine shape. Sen. Lott said today maybe we should have stood for tax cuts and Social Security and reform and education - now he tells us. The election is over. Look, Trent Lott is probably in better shape when it comes to a challenge. Senators are nicer to each other; they don't really like to challenge sitting leaders. I think the House is a different story. I think there's a lot of real anger at Speaker Gingrich right now. JIM LEHRER: Sort if out. Who are the people who are angry? PAUL GIGOT: It's across-the-board, Jim. I've talked to members today from the right, left, and center, and it's not just the conservatives. The moderates are looking square in the face of being in the minority in 2000. This is preservation. And what you hear time and again is not that he made a mistake this time. It's the third time. 1995, the shutdown, he was outmaneuvered. In the budget deal a lot of people thought he didn't do a very good job, and now this time boom, he got outmaneuvered again, so how do we learn from our mistakes? The problem to the people who want to challenge Gingrich have is they don't have a horse. There's not a natural - JIM LEHRER: What about Congressman Livingston of Louisiana? PAUL GIGOT: If he wanted to do it, the appropriations chairman, he could probably win right now. JIM LEHRER: Right now you think he could? PAUL GIGOT: This morning, with the feeling - if he decided to do it, I think he would have an excellent shot at prevailing. Now, he may not want to do that, he may want to wait, because these - you know - fights like this - if you go for it, you'd better win. JIM LEHRER: You've got one shot too, right? What do you think, Mark, on - MARK SHIELDS: Well, I think a Livingston - Bob Livingston-Tom DeLay-Jennifer Dunn ticket - congresswoman from Washington - Tom DeLay, the Whip - JIM LEHRER: From Texas. MARK SHIELDS: From Texas. Would be an interesting troika to put it together, and - PAUL GIGOT: Go ahead. MARK SHIELDS: That's - that's one possibility. JIM LEHRER: To run against - MARK SHIELDS: To run against a Gingrich - Armey. JIM LEHRER: Okay. MARK SHIELDS: Okay. Now, I think the Paul made, the Republicans are apprehensive, you have to understand the most important election in the country yesterday, tough for us in Washington to take, was in the state of California where Gray Davis won the biggest victory any Democrat has won - a bigger victory than Ronald Reagan had won - carried men - carried whites - but more important than that, he carried the assembly and the state senate. That means in the next census when California picks up another three or four House seats, that the redistricting of California's congressional districts will be done by Democrats, and they are - Democrats have a long tradition in that state of carving our districts up quite creatively to a maximum benefit to their party. That alone could be the turnaround in control of the House. That's how important -
	Jesse Ventura's victory
	JIM LEHRER: We also need to mention Jesse Ventura's victory in Minnesota for the governor's race - last night - but he was running on the Reform Party - Ross Perot's Party, and a lot of people are unsettled about that. What do you think? How do you read that? PAUL GIGOT: Well, he has had - I think he was a mayor before, so - JIM LEHRER: Absolutely. He didn't come out of nowhere. PAUL GIGOT: Pro-wrestling. I - you know, I thought it was interesting - he was asked on television today what his priorities were, and he said, my number one priority is, take a surplus and state budget and return it in tax cuts. He stole a message there from the Republican gubernatorial candidates, a message that had the Republicans in Congress pursued, and maybe they'd have done better. JIM LEHRER: And he said I'm not here to lead a rebellion; I'm here to lead the state of Minnesota. MARK SHIELDS: Surprised me that it was Minnesota. I mean, Minnesota, the state sort of good government, of the two parties, and all the rest of it, that surprised me. I mean, I could see it coming in a state where there is less political structure, sort of more insurrectionist, insurgent tradition. That really was impressive in his victory. JIM LEHRER: Okay. Gentlemen, thank you both very much.