POLITICAL WRAP

October 16, 1998
	The big political news out of Washington this week was the $500 billion budget agreement. Wall Street Journal columist Paul Gigot and syndicated columnist Mark Shields discuss the winners and losers of the deal.

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. 23, 1998: Pollsters discuss the public's reaction. Sept. 21, 1998: Historians discuss the president's testimony. Sept. 21, 1998: Two former federal prosecutor's discuss how the testimony looked to them. Sept. 18, 1998: Shields and Gigot analyze the partisan struggle over the release of grand jury evidence. Sept. 17, 1998: How is the world media covering the Lewinsky matter? Sept. 17, 1998: A discussion on the videotape debate. Browse the NewsHour's coverage of Omaha road trip, Starr Investigation, and Shields & Gigot.   Wall Street Journal House Judiciary Committee White House	MARGARET WARNER: It's our end of the week political analysis with syndicated columnist Mark Shields and Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot. Mark, how important is the support in the African-American community for the president right now?
	African-American support for President Clinton.
	MARK SHIELDS: Enormously important. I mean, I think two factors emerged. One, African-American voters overwhelmingly - 86 percent - nine out of 10 give Bill Clinton a favorable job rating, as opposed to basically a little over a majority of the rest of the country do - and they've been very supportive, but his most visible and conspicuous supporters and defenders in elected office have been African-Americans, whether it's Charlie Rangel of New York; Bobby Scott of Virginia, on the Judiciary Committee, along with Maxine Waters of Los Angeles, and they are reflecting their own constituencies, and the support for the president and their sympathy and are identification with the president, so -- and the people who fled the president, or have been more lukewarm in their support -- have been those from swing marginal districts or the new Democrats and so their support, the support of African-American politicians, has been most - most intensely felt at this time. MARGARET WARNER: Is it going to make a difference in the elections? PAUL GIGOT, Wall Street Journal columnist: I think it's going to make a difference in some elections, and that's why you see the president coming out in an off-year election trying to drum up Democratic turnout because a great fear for the last two months from the Democrats is that Republicans are bouncing off the walls. I had a Republican tell me the other day I'm going to follow Chicago rules -- vote early, vote often. And they're excited, but Democrats might be upset or might be disappointed and might not come out. So right now he's trying very hard to gin up those voters. And particularly, black voters are very important to an awful lot of Democratic candidates, to Fritz Hollings in South Carolina, needs them to win - Carol Moseley Braun - if she's going to win - though she's behind in Illinois - she's going to need that turnout. MARGARET WARNER: The president is out campaigning for Carol Moseley Braun today. Do you think she is really behind? Do you think he can help her? MARK SHIELDS: president's help in an important respect, and that's usually financial. As far as delivering votes or coat tails, an incumbent United States senator, especially one as high profile as Carol Moseley Braun, I don't think the president affects a lot of votes. He may be able to gin up some enthusiasm among liberal constituents who have maybe turned lukewarm on the incumbent. But it's not question of coat tails here.
	The winners and losers of the budget deal.
	MARGARET WARNER: All right the budget deal, Paul. Let's turn to the budget deal. Announced yesterday between the president and the leadership. Who won in that negotiation? Who won more? PAUL GIGOT: John Conyers, Democratic ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee; he was the big winner. In fact, the Republicans on Capitol Hill and the Senator kept calling it the House Judiciary Committee omnibus spending bill, because this was -- what House Democrats said, was, Mr. President, we backed you on impeachment, maybe we need to say this, it was implicit, we're backing you on impeachment; now we want something, and the president skillfully went and used his threat of a veto and a shutdown of the government, still intimidating Republicans, to get an awful lot that the Democrats really wanted - they got $20 billion in extra spending, most of it on domestic, some of it on defense the Republicans could point to. But this was a kind of bill that if the Democratic Congress had passed it, Republicans, nine out of ten of them in the House, would have voted against it, but they basically - it was a political exit fee for the Republicans - and they were paying - willing to pay it to get out of town. MARK SHIELDS: Let me underline one point Paul made in particular, and that is, there was a time in politics not too many years ago when Democrats were accused of being soft on crime or soft on communism. And Democrats would turn a panic when this charge was leveled because they knew it had a political fallout to them. And, you know, back peddle, do anything you want, hum patriotic songs, or, you know, do something. I'd have to say the Republicans are just as terrified, just as intimidated, just as panic-stricken when they talk about closing down the government, bringing the government -- I mean, you could see it. Bill Clinton played a hand, a very bad hand. He had two sixes going into this hand, and he sat when he had the Senate Democrats lined up behind him to support any deal. And the Republicans basically caved. And I think the Republicans forgot a basic rule of legislating, Margaret. It's a lot easier on Capitol Hill to stop legislation, which they did this year. They did it on tobacco. And they did it on campaign finance. They did it on patient bill or rights. With a discipline intense minority you can do that. But you have to pass certain bills like appropriations. And what the Democrats seem to understand and the White House in particular was if you put the entire legislative agenda into the appropriations bill, it was going to pass, and so they were able for the past eight days - after eight bad months - the Democrats were - to change the conversation from Monica and impeachment to education and teachers and schools - of class sizes and kids and all of a sudden I think Paul's right -- the Republicans would not have supported that bill if it had been a Democratic Congress passing it.
	Trouble for the GOP?
	MARGARET WARNER: Do you agree that that's why they caved? I mean, what happened, for instance, Paul, to their tax cut fervor? PAUL GIGOT: Well, exactly, good question. And a lot of their voters are asking that question. Newt Gingrich was going to make it in the House a priority. Give him at least credit for trying to develop something thematic that they could run on, other than Monica Lewinsky's coat tails. But in the Senate it died because, I think, of a failure of leadership on Trent Lott's part, the Republican leader couldn't organize his caucus to support it, and then they weren't even willing to put it up for a vote. And in the end what they thought they had was all those poll numbers saying we're going to do well, we're going to do well because our votes are upset about Bill Clinton. We don't need anything else to run on. We don't need a tax cut. But once you took that off the table, it allowed the president to come in and steal 10 days way out in the middle of an election campaign, redefine the election, get his voters saying, you know - his Democrats saying, you know, Bill Clinton is delivering something for me. So it was an enormous miscalculation. Newt Gingrich was telling his troops in the summer let's wait until October; the president will be flat on his back. Well, they waited until October, and he was flat enough on his back to roll right over Newt Gingrich. MARGARET WARNER: Bob Novak, a conservative columnist, said - and a colleague of yours, I know, on another show, Mark - wrote this week that there was deep malaise among Republicans. Is it that bad? MARK SHIELDS: Well, I mean, at the end of a session like this - and who am I to say Robert Novak isn't fully and totally right on everything he writes - but at the end of the session both sides claimed victory, all right? But where you can tell where Novak had something and Mr. Gigot had something in his own column -- is that the recriminations and the criticisms were all on the Republican side. You didn't hear any Democrats get up there and say this is a terrible plan - there were Democrats, you know, who had grave misgivings about many of the elements of it. But they were claiming victory and feeling victorious. And David McIntosh, one of the young conservative leaders in the House, took on - chastised his own membership. And I think there is a sense of what's the point of being in the majority if we can't get anything? I mean, I think the strategic mistake that was made by the Republicans was this: They should have turned over the impeachment and Monica to Henry Hyde, just turned it over and said, Henry, you do it, none of us is going to comment on it. Jim Rogan and others recommended earlier -- and they should have devoted all their energy and effort to healing that rift on the tax cut and the budget, so they could present a united front. Instead, they played impeachment politics, counted on somehow Democratic disunity leading to some disarray now on the 1st of October, and that they would pick up the pieces and there were no pieces to pick up.
	What happened to the budget cap?
	MARGARET WARNER: Paul, also, your paper said today, it blows a hole in the balanced budget caps that both parties agreed to last year. What happened to the deficit hawks in both parties? PAUL GIGOT: Well, this is, I think the blame for this principally goes to the president. The president said - remember - in his State of the Union -- all the surplus should be for Social Security. Well, what he really meant was I'm going to use this to block tax cut. But once tax cuts were killed, he was perfectly happy to spend a third of the surplus on whatever the House Democrats said are their priorities. So, in fact, about $20 billion - this $20 billion is blowing the caps that was supposed to be so wonderful last year. But, you see, it's not really breaking the caps because it's only a supplemental bill is the way they put it. It's just all rhetorical evasion. But it's a real problem for Republicans who said, look, this is our legacy. And now they're going along - because they don't want to seem embarrassed - they're going along with what the president wants. MARK SHIELDS: $9 billion of it, of course, was in defense, which is what Republicans are trying to - can't fault 'em - they're - I think they're legitimate. They're trying to be honest about this. But the reality is that's an issue that cuts their way. It's not an issue of great saliency to voters, not an awful lot of people talking about national defense in this election year of 1998, but so -- and almost half of the money - was over and above the cap was for defense. But the point is, Margaret, we're in uncharted waters. This is the first time a Congress and a White House has dealt with surpluses. I mean, we can go all the way back to the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt before we find a president dealing with surpluses. I thought they showed remarkable restraint to limit it to $20 billion that they went over. I mean -- MARGARET WARNER: Pocket change. MARK SHIELDS: Exactly. PAUL GIGOT: Well, Bill Archer, the Ways and Means chairman, has been saying all year, if we don't - if it doesn't go back in taxes, it's going to be spent. Well, they're proving he's right.
	Focusing the impeachment inquiry.
	MARGARET WARNER: All right. Mark, back on the impeachment front, which you raised earlier, Henry Hyde this week, the Judiciary Committee chairman, did say he'd like to narrow the charges against the president and he really wants to finish the inquiry by the end of the year. How did you read that? MARK SHIELDS: Which way is the wind blowing? Two weeks ago the Republican leaders, Mr. DeLay and Mr. Gingrich, were talking about expanding the investigation. China transfer of sales - transfer of technology to China - 1996 campaign. Now we're down to and we all of a sudden saw this week by a two to one margin in public opinion polls people thought the Republicans were doing a bad job on impeachment. So now we're narrowing it, and see how that works. I think Henry Hyde is right. I think Henry Hyde does want have it be a short investigation. He doesn't see any long-term value or advantage to either the House or to the Republicans. And I think he's going with the three strongest suits that he has. But I think it is reflective, quite frankly, of what the public attitude is at this point. PAUL GIGOT: I think he is -- Mark is reading a little more into it than Henry Hyde actually intended. If you look at the way the Nixon impeachment was handled, they were distilled down into, I think, three articles, with multiple clauses based on thematic points, thematic charges, and that's what the Judiciary Committee chairman was saying this time. You know, what we've got are multiple lying under oath, obstruction of justice, witness tampering. These are thematic. MARGARET WARNER: So re-categorizing them but not really eliminating them. PAUL GIGOT: He was also trying to say look, I'm going to be fairly reasonable and try to finish this, but that's not new. MARK SHIELDS: A day is a lifetime in politics, and a week is forever. A week ago I would have said Paul's theory made sense. This week - bad numbers - reaction - change - shortened the agenda. I think it reflects public opinion. MARGARET WARNER: All right. Thanks, guys, have a good weekend. MARK SHIELDS: Thank you.