POLITICAL WRAP

October 22 , 1999
		Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot and Boston Globe columnist Tom Oliphant discuss Elizabeth Dole's departure, the abortion debate and campaign finance reform.

Online Forum: What issues do you think should shape Election 2000? A NewsHour special emphasis on the Election 2000 issues. Jan. 15, 1998: The GOP debates establishing a litmus test over partial birth abortions. Oct. 19, 1999: The Senate debates and defeats campaign finance reform. Oct. 20, 1999: Elizabeth Dole calls it quits. Sept. 7, 1999: Congressional efforts to pass the Appropriation bills Browse the NewsHour's Shields & Gigot index     The White House	RAY SUAREZ: The week in politics as seen by Gigot and Oliphant. That's Paul Gigot of The Wall Street Journal and Tom Oliphant of The Boston Globe, sitting in tonight for Mark Shields. Tom, let me start with you. Another vote in the Senate on the partial birth abortion ban, same result. It passed but not by enough, a sure veto promised. What was different about the debate and the vote this time?
	The abortion debate
	TOM OLIPHANT: Three things, and they were a lot different, Ray -- symbolized I think on the moment of the last day of the debate when the chief sponsor of this proposal, Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, was at the Senate desk changing the language of his proposal. And he was doing in it part because the environment for this vote is much different this year. Partly, it's a legal environment that's different. I think we're up to 18 courts now in the country that have just shredded these statutes, issued injunctions to prevent them from going into effect, because they go right at some of the most basic principles in the decision Roe vs. Wade. I think what was also different about this fight this year is that you saw for the first time some real common ground emerge between supporters and opponents -- a proposal by Dick Durbin of Illinois that got 38 votes, not bad the first time out, it will be back -- and finally, you saw an effort to put this into next year's political campaign, symbolized by Tom Harkin's proposal to put the Senate on record supporting Roe vs. Wade. It passed, but as Tom Harkin said afterwards, by only one vote, which to him means that abortion rights in the Senate right now are literally hanging by a thread. So you have the same determined advocacy on one side, I think maybe a little bit more life in the pro-choice world as a result of what's happened. RAY SUAREZ: Paul? PAUL GIGOT: Of course the Senate can't do anything about Roe vs. Wade that's a Supreme Court issue. I think the reason Rick Santorum -- the sponsor on the Republican side of this bill - was at the desk was to try to get one vote, Bob Kerrey of Nebraska's vote. He had said in the past that he was open maybe to moving. And what the pro-life community wanted to show on this was some progress. They wanted to at least show they were inching closer to that veto override. Bob Kerrey -- the 14 Democrats who voted for it this time, as last time, but they wanted get an additional one, and they were trying to work the language that might get Senator Kerrey on board. Senator Kerrey is up in 2000. I think the backdrop of this actually is the last election. In 1996, Tom Harkin barely won against a Republican in Iowa, and this issue was used against him. And that informed an awful lot of his colleagues two years later this is a tough issue. Last time, Mark Neumann, Republican from Wisconsin, tried to use this issue and he overplayed his hand, I think; a lot of Republicans think that too in Wisconsin against Russ Feingold. He lost, and I think a lot of Democrats are thinking this isn't as powerful as we once thought. RAY SUAREZ: Is this an issue that has a different power that's going to play out in a different way in the congressional campaigns versus the presidential campaigns, is this shaping up? PAUL GIGOT: I think so, I really do. I think the Bush campaign has decided that they don't want to make-- and frankly, the McCain campaign and even Forbes' campaign to some extent, the three leading contenders -- they don't want abortion to be a centerpiece issue of their agenda. So I think they're going to have it be -- they're going to talk about it a little bit in passing, but for some Senators and some Congressmen, if they use it against their opponent, particularly in pro-life states, Pennsylvania, some others, they might be able to use it effectively there. RAY SUAREZ: So the difference between just running one place and having to run everywhere. TOM OLIPHANT: Yes, though in the primaries, and even in the general election, it could be a problem for a Republican presidential nominee who sort of sloughs abortion off because it is one of the great motivating factors on the right today, so you do have to show your colors. On the other side, though, I come back to the fact that Senator Kerrey did not go on this bill, and the reason he didn't was because there's an absolute refusal to accept any proposal that allows exceptions to protect the health of the woman involved. And Harkin made his proposal because there is now sentiment on the pro-choice side that abortion is not a liability but an asset, including this aspect of it.
	Campaign finance reform: Boxers or briefs?
	RAY SUAREZ: Paul, another issue that got another vote this week was campaign finance reform, and again, a very similar result from the last votes. Did we see anything new on the horizon this time? PAUL GIGOT: We saw something new. We saw the supporters of it, John McCain and Russ Feingold, try to strip this thing down to its boxer shorts, to get into fighting trim, get rid of whatever they could to try to get more votes. And in fact, they ran into trouble not so much from the Republicans, but from the Democrats who decided that they didn't like the fact that they dropped off a portion of it that they had thought was significant on issue advocacy, those outside ads that other groups sometimes run against candidates. So what happened was they -- in trying to get more Republicans on -- they ended up being, I think sabotaged, as reformers, by -- of Bob Torriccelli, the head of the Democratic Senatorial campaign committee, and Tom Daschle, the leader of the Democrats, who really want this -- they're not so enthusiastic about campaign finance reform either, but they really do love the issue to use against Republicans. RAY SUAREZ: Well, some Democrats were probably secretly relieved that they didn't have to cast a vote on the stripped-down bill. TOM OLIPHANT: Paul is absolutely right on that point. I think maybe the bill could be said to have been stripped down to briefs, not boxer shorts. But there were a few things different about the vote: 52 votes to break the filibuster the last time, 55 votes this time. And there were some negotiations going on for another Republican or two, notably Chuck Hagel of Nebraska; negotiations which the democrats helped block, with what Paul talked about, but there was also a change in position by Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, who had made a commitment to allow five days of debate and negotiation to proceed, and he cut this thing off on a party line vote after three days, which has some of the supporters threatening to bring it back. I doubt that they will, but it shows, I think, that there's still life in this dog, and while it has no impact as the issue in any race I can think of in America, and probably never will, it may have some legs as an issue. RAY SUAREZ: Well, it's sort of amorphous sometimes, it's there, it's the elephant in the room, Elizabeth Dole talked about how money ended having a big part in her demise, the campaign's demise. TOM OLIPHANT: To me that's a different system, that's the presidential-- we're talking the soft money system here. The presidential system I think is a legitimate test of your ability to organize, frankly. And I think George W. Bush deserves -- even though voters tend to resent the size of his stash -- his effort in organizing it was out front and up front, and I don't quite understand Mrs. Dole's complaint about a system - I mean, I don't know if Paul remembers this, but at the beginning of her campaign some of her people were even talking about taking off like a rocket and rejecting the federal match just like Bush ended up doing, right? PAUL GIGOT: I do understand her complaint in this sense, though: She's talking about, and she said this explicitly, the $1,000 limit on presidential contributions, which hasn't changed since 1974. That makes it very, very difficult if you're not either a millionaire or very well-known with a huge network like George W. Bush, his father's network, the governors' network, to raise money. Before that reform - that limit passed in 1974, you could do what Gene McCarthy did in 1968 -- you could go to some rich liberal supporter who didn't like the war in Vietnam and say write a check for $50,000, $100,000, we'll know who it is, but you can finance a campaign. Now you can't. Now you have to spend all your time on the phone or going to fund-raisers. And Mrs. Dole said raise that limit to $5,000 at a minimum, which would be more in line as if inflation -- where it had been taken into account. Where I disagree with Tom is I don't think campaign finance reform is going anywhere in the Senate until the reformers themselves make some accommodation to that kind of a reality and to -- and strictly don't try to pursue the tilted windmills that you're going to find some other Senators here without taking that into consideration. TOM OLIPHANT: Paul is absolutely right on that point, and I think the evidence in support of it is the effort that was being made by McCain and Feingold to talk to some republicans about doing precisely that. They got Hagel kind of interested in this, and that's the trade that is available to the so-called reformers, and I think if they make it and if the Republican majority maybe settles a little bit after next year's election, that's why I believe it's still alive. PAUL GIGOT: Only if John McCain wins the White House.
	Confirming Carol Moseley-Braun
	RAY SUAREZ: This week we also saw a controversy over an unlikely ambassadorial appointment, Carol Moseley-Braun, former Senator from Illinois, hoped to be heading to Wellington, New Zealand. But Jesse Helms stood up and made it clear that she wasn't going to get a vote anytime soon. PAUL GIGOT: Well, Jesse Helms made a mistake you shouldn't make in confirmation politics, which is letting personal pique get in the way of political judgment. You know, in "The Godfather" they always say, "it's not personal, it's business." That's the way you're supposed to think about confirmation politics. If you don't want somebody to be confirmed, you don't say, as Jesse Helms did when he was cornered by a reporter, well, maybe she can get through if she'll apologize for the way she treated me in the Senate. That made this look as if it was personal pique, that made it look petty and not a question of principle, and because Carol Moseley-Braun is black, is also played right into a Democratic strategy, which is to try to hit the Republicans for racial insensitivity. Tom Daschle took to his news conference this week and listed a whole series of things where he hit the Republicans on race and Carol Moseley-Braun was Exhibit A. TOM OLIPHANT: Actually, I think she was Exhibit C. There was a black state Supreme Court judge from Missouri, who was rejected after two favorable votes in committee. The disparity in terms of judges who are held up or delayed is greater, sadly, for minorities and women than it is for white people. Insensitivity is a very interesting word to use in a setting like this, because what it means is not knowing or caring what other people think, and that's not a wild description of Senator Helms' conduct in the Senate. Sometimes he's an equal opportunity destroyer. But this question of insensitivity has bothered many people, not just in the Democratic Party, but in the minority community in America, and I think one of the sad features of white people sometimes is that they are insensitive to the way other people feel. RAY SUAREZ: Tom Oliphant, Paul Gigot, good to see you both.