POLITICAL WRAP September 5, 1997 NEWSHOUR TRANSCRIPT

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It was an interesting week in politics: Vice President Al Gore fell under investigation for illegal campaign financing, and, for the first time in memory, Buddhist nuns testified on the Hill. After a background report by Tom Bearden, Jim Lehrer reviews the week in politics with our pundits Mark Shields and Paul Gigot.

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A RealAudio version of this report is available. September 5, 1997: A backgrounder on this week's campaign financing investigation. September 4, 1997: Two senators and a reporter discuss the Justice Department investigation into Gore's action. September 4, 1997: Tom Bearden reports on the first day's hearing back from the August break. March 3, 1997: Margaret Warner discusses Al Gore's press conference with two senators. February 27, 1997: Jim Lehrer leads a discussion on the accusations against the White House campaign financing team . February 25, 1997: Elizabeth Farnsworth discusses the growing DNC fund raising scandal with White House Special Counsel Lanny Davis and chair of the House investigation Dan Burton (R-IN). Browse the Online NewsHour's campaign finance and Congressional coverage.

JIM LEHRER: Now, to Shields & Gigot, syndicated columnist Mark Shields, Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot. Paul, is this--judge the severity of it from your point of view, the Buddhist Temple episode.

PAUL GIGOT, Wall Street Journal: I think that the Buddhist Temple incident is--it cuts Al Gore a little bit. I think it does real damage when you combine it with what happened this week on the telephone calls. I think this is the week those things together really Al Gore began to bleed politically for the first time.

JIM LEHRER: Do you agree?

What's the severity of the Buddhist Temple episode?

MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated Columnist: I think the Buddhist Temple looks a lot worse than it was. I think it looks like fund-raising event. It was a fund-raising event. And I don’t think--I think it’s absolutely plausible--as the defense--the majority counsel said yesterday--that the Vice President didn’t know about it. The Vice President--no one’s ever accused of being dumb. It would only be dumb to go to an event where you knew 11 people were going to be asked to launder funds the next day to come up with $55,000 and then shred documents. I mean, that--regardless of any ethical reservations, which I think would be considerable, there would be serious political reservations. I do think Vice President Gore is in trouble.

He’s in trouble for a couple of reasons. First of all, Al Gore, Jim, has been a figure of some derision, as all Vice Presidents are, but it’s always been about his stiffness, his woodenness. His integrity has always been stipulated. Now his integrity is being challenged for the first time. And that is painful. I also think it’s fairly conclusively established that the conservative movement in this country that’s been out to get Bill Clinton, whether in editorial page columns or anyplace else, has concluded they’re not going to get him. And you can see the artillery just switch over and going right at Al Gore.

PAUL GIGOT: All that artillery that didn’t touch Bill Clinton.

JIM LEHRER: Is that a valid point here, that--in fact, Sen. Torricelli was on this program last night, said that that’s what these hearings are all about, is the year 2000 and trying to get Al Gore and hurt him as a potential presidential candidate.

"...what these hearings are all about, is the year 2000 and trying to get Al Gore and hurt him as a potential presidential candidate."

PAUL GIGOT: That’s not what they’re only about but that’s part of it. I mean, I don’t think there’s any doubt about that, that what’s happened here is that I think the Republicans on the committee have shifted strategy, frankly, and quite apart from Al Gore and Bill Clinton. What they’ve given up on, I think, is finding the truth from these hearings. I think they’ve decided that with all the witnesses not cooperating and people in Jakarta and vanishing elsewhere around the globe, they’re not going to get anywhere. Their goal now is to get an independent counsel appointed because that’s the only way I think they feel they’re going to get to the bottom of this, and a byproduct of that is it’ll do severe damage to Al Gore. And that’s what the Gore people in the White House are really afraid of.

JIM LEHRER: The telephone thing, the other thing you mentioned, which is--has not been a subject of the hearings yet, and that’s the decision by Attorney General Reno to start a preliminary inquiry, see if there’s an independent counsel, because the fact is not even in dispute, that the Vice President used a telephone in his office to solicit money in the ‘96 campaign. Is that a more serious matter than the other?

PAUL GIGOT: If you ask me just on the face, I think the Buddhist Temple thing’s a lot more serious. But in terms of--

JIM LEHRER: If, in fact, he knew about it and did it openly?

PAUL GIGOT: Yes. But what we’re talking about here is legal culpability. And I think the calls now that we know that--see, Janet Reno is the person in the administration who gets the decision to make--name an independent counsel. Her reason--justification for not naming one before was this technical distinction between hard money and soft money, which nobody but lawyers understand. OK?

A quick recap: hard money vs. soft money.

JIM LEHRER: Quickly. We have to explain this every time. Hard money is money that goes directly to candidates.

PAUL GIGOT: That’s right.

MARK SHIELDS: Limited

JIM LEHRER: Limited.

MARK SHIELDS: And regulated and reported.

JIM LEHRER: Absolutely. And soft money goes to causes and to parties--

MARK SHIELDS: And eventually to candidates.

JIM LEHRER: Right. But not regulated--

MARK SHIELDS: That’s right.

JIM LEHRER: --or reported.

MARK SHIELDS: Not limited.

JIM LEHRER: Not limited, right.

PAUL GIGOT: She said Al Gore didn’t break the law because he was raising soft money. Okay. She painted herself into a legal, analytical corner. Now, it turns out the Democratic National Committee this week said he was raising hard money too. So, her justification is blown right away. So it’s going to be very hard for her now not to name an independent counsel.

JIM LEHRER: So you think that’s going to happen, do you agree with that, Mark, there’s going to be an independent counsel?

MARK SHIELDS: I think there's probably the chance of an independent counsel increased dramatically this week, Jim. These hearings have been snake-bit right from the beginning if you look at it. I mean, they had their big moment in July. They had Haley Barbour, the former Republican National Chairman out there. They had some real headlines to make. And it was totally eclipsed by the celebration by both the Republican Congress, the Democratic President, of the first balanced budget in 30 years, knocked ‘em off the front pages. This week, they’ve got Al Gore, Buddhist nuns in cinnamon robes, buzz cuts--

PAUL GIGOT: Cinnamon. That’s nice.

MARK SHIELDS: You like cinnamon? Cinnamon color. They were a cinnamon color.

JIM LEHRER: Right.

MARK SHIELDS: I liked them. In fact--

JIM LEHRER: All right.

MARK SHIELDS: So, where do they get knocked off? Right here. Every place in the country. It’s back on page nine. I think the independent counsel, Jim, is a godsend to the Republicans, not to Fred Thompson, and not to Republicans like John McCain, who really want to change this system, but to Mitch McConnell, to the Republican finance--to the AFL-CIO--to nobody who wants a change, because why--what it means is, hey, we can’t do anything, we can’t do anything for 1998. We can’t have any hearings because they’re investigating this. And you know what happened on Ollie North, for goodness sakes, they had the hearings and then left with no convictions. So, rather than have any, you know, jeopardize the ultimate convictions of these evil people, we won’t have any hearings; we won’t do anything about it; we’ll perpetuate the status quo. That’s the real political impact of an independent counsel.

PAUL GIGOT: There’s some more impact. Al Gore gets somebody aimed right at him for two and a half to three years, running right up probably into the presidential primary in the year 2000.

JIM LEHRER: And that’s not good for Al Gore.

PAUL GIGOT: This is why--why else would grown men who are smart use phrases like "no controlling legal authority," or "donor maintenance meeting," which is what they said? It’s not a fund-raiser. It’s a donor maintenance meeting. What does that mean? Will they be cleaning the floors? What--the reason they do that is because it doesn’t--it allows them to say it’s not illegal.

"Al Gore seems very involved in what’s going on around him. If that’s the case, then people aren’t going to accept that he was out of the loop."

MARK SHIELDS: I think the Gore strategy is borrowing heavily from a very established, successful strategy in executive politics in this country, that of Ronald Reagan and George Bush. The statement yesterday was, after the hearings today, he was of the loop. That worked for George Bush in Iran Contra. Ronald Reagan never knew arms for hostages. And people accepted it. Now, the problem with Al Gore is: Are people going to accept it because Al Gore seems very smart? Al Gore seems very interested. Al Gore seems very involved in what’s going on around him. If that’s the case, then people aren’t going to accept that he was out of the loop.

JIM LEHRER: What do you think of Sen. Specter’s suggestion today that--it’s also been made by others--that Vice President Gore should go before that Thompson committee, sit down there, confront the Senators, and answer all of this on national television?

PAUL GIGOT: I would say that that is probably a very bad idea because that will draw--politically for the Gores--if I was thinking about this for Al Gore, it’s a very bad idea, because, No. One, it’s going to have every TV camera in America focused on his alleged wrongdoing; two, it is going--who knows what he might say that could create problems for him later if there is an independent counsel named, so I think this idea of just hunkering down and saying nothing and having Bill Clinton, the President, walk out and say, whatever the Vice President did, it was all legal--not that it was right, not that it was honorable, but it was legal, is the right political strategy.

MARK SHIELDS: I would say that one American President saved his public life by doing that. That was Richard Nixon, who was--granted, there was a non-adversarial situation. 1952, he was about to get dumped from the ticket. The drumbeat had started. Dwight Eisenhower was ready to cashier him in a moment. He did the Checker speech. I think Al Gore going down there and showing passion and intensity about it, answering those questions could very well put his critics on the defensive. And I think it would change forever the image of Al Gore to most Americans. Now, Paul’s right. There’s a big risk involved, but I think that otherwise you face the death of a thousand cuts.

Should Gore go before the Thompson committee?

JIM LEHRER: You mean, in other words, you think he ought to do it?

MARK SHIELDS: Oh, I do. I think it would be--you command the attention--you go in there--you go in with a statement and go ahead, fire at me. I’m right here, all by myself, no battery of lawyers; let’s hear the questions.

PAUL GIGOT: Well, not if he’s gong to use phrases, mealy mouthed phrases like "no controlling legal authority," or "donor maintenance meeting." If he’s going to tell all and say, look, let’s cut with the legalisms here, let’s talk about what this is really--let’s talk turkey--we know how the system works. If he can stop evading everything and come clean, that’s a little different story, but I assume that they figure he can’t because the lawyers are all whispering in his ear.

MARK SHIELDS: Donor maintenance does sound like an escort service. I agree with that. I would hope he wouldn’t use that--

JIM LEHRER: Paul said earlier, Mark, that he’s bleeding, that Al Gore is bleeding. Do you smell blood on him?

MARK SHIELDS: I don’t smell--

JIM LEHRER: Politically--

MARK SHIELDS: No. I think he--obviously, he’s feeling the heat right now. I mean--and I really mean that. I mean, they’re giving up on Bill Clinton. I mean, the American spectators, for goodness sakes, they’ve cut down trees across the entire United States--

PAUL GIGOT: To incredible effect.

MARK SHIELDS: --going to get Bill Clinton--only tomorrow he’s going to be indicted or impeached or whatever--and they finally said, the guy’s going to make it. We’ve got to do something about 2000. And Al Gore’s feeling that heat right now, and I think--do I think he’s bruised and black and blue--sure. And it’s not going to be easy. I mean, he’s the front-runner. He’s ahead of anybody in both parties right now. There’s going to be--Democrats are going to be sniping at him, as well as Republicans.

JIM LEHRER: You don’t dispute that he remains the front-runner, as we sit here tonight, right? He hasn’t been hurt that badly.

PAUL GIGOT: Absolutely. That’s right. I would say the danger for him--Mark thinks the danger is he becomes a figure of ridicule, and there’s something to that--but I would say the bigger danger is that he becomes Clintonized; that his reputation for being Mr. Clean vanishes and he begins to take on some of the ethics problems that the President has. And the President’s great advantage was he’s Houdini at getting out of that. What if Al Gore begins to show that he can get into trouble but he lacks the Houdini-like quality to get out of it?

JIM LEHRER: We’ll see.

MARK SHIELDS: Gets Clintonized to the point where he’s 62 percent approval in the polls.

JIM LEHRER: Take that. Thank you both very much.

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