NewsHour Online: Shields & Gigot

JIM LEHRER: Lee, what do the polls and the wisdom say about tomorrow as we speak, sir?

LEE BANDY, The State Newspaper: (Columbia, SC) Well, the polls down here show that Dole has a double digit lead. It may have closed a little bit, but the sense is that Bob Dole is going to win his first primary out of his native Midwest.

JIM LEHRER: And his native Midwest being South Carolina? Oh, you mean outside the Midwest?

JIM LEHRER: Okay. I got you. And then what happens after that? Who's going to run? Is there going to be a strong second, or is it--what do the polls say about that? discussion

MR. BANDY: The way it is right now, and it looks like Pat Buchanan is going to come in second, and Steve Forbes and Lamar Alexander are fighting over third place. And if Lamar Alexander comes in fourth place, I think he will be wounded severely and will limp into Georgia, and I don't know where he's going to find his victory that he's looking for.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Let's go back through that. What is the base of Dole's support in South Carolina? Why is he going to do so well?

MR. BANDY: Well, I think the trade issue has worked to his advantage here, and not to Buchanan's. Our state is in a period of transition from the Old South to the New South, and Pat Buchanan seems to be playing on the fears and emotions of the Old South. The trade picture here has improved considerably. The economic picture has improved considerably. The jobs have gone from the low skilled, low paying jobs in the textile industry to high skill, higher paying jobs in plants like BMW, Fuji, Pirelli, Michelin, we could go on. In fact, foreign companies have invested $27 billion here in South Carolina in the last nine years, and, in effect, they've created a new middle class in South Carolina, people who are making between thirty-five thousand and forty thousand dollars a year, as opposed to twenty thousand dollars a year in the textile mills. And discussion

these people who work in these plants, the new middle class so to speak, are not going to vote for Pat Buchanan in my opinion.

JIM LEHRER: Well, now, the word, the conventional wisdom going in that, was that Pat Buchanan was going to catch fire in South Carolina. Why did--was this the reason it didn't happen, the economic mission didn't work, or what was--what about the rest of his message, the social conservative?

MR. BANDY: Well, I think what you said is a factor, but I think the best thing that happened to Bob Dole down here is that Pat Buchanan did not do as well in Arizona as he thought he was going to do. If Pat Buchanan had done well in Arizona, he would have come in here with a head of steam, and I'm not sure that anybody could have stopped him. Now, Pat Buchanan can get together a conservative coalition of those who love the Confederate flag, those who want to keep women out of the Citadel, the textile workers, and conservative Christians, and if the race narrows, he could win with that coalition, but I don't think that's going to happen.

JIM LEHRER: Yeah. All right, now, what about Alexander and Forbes, any--what happened to them there, or what is happening to them?

MR. BANDY: Well, the latest polls show them in the teens. I think that Lamar is getting 13 percent and Forbes is 10 percent, so they are in a statistical dead heat for third place. And I think that Lamar is trying to come in third because if he comes in fourth, I think that he can begin to pack it in.

JIM LEHRER: Yeah. Mark, are any of these four front-runners, is South Carolina a magic moment for any of them tomorrow?

MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated Columnist: Well, it's a magic moment, Jim, because each time there's been a victory, the race has changed, so it's a magic moment, I think Lee Bandy's absolutely right, that Bob Dole has to be considered the favorite and if, in fact, he does win, it is his first victory outside of the Dakotas. He's won in South Dakota and North Dakota. He hasn't won out of the Central time zone. He hasn't won other than an $8 cab ride from Russell, Kansas, so this would be an important victory for him.

PAUL GIGOT, Wall Street Journal: I do. I think in particular because it would be a victory over Pat Buchanan who, as Lee pointed out, was saying, if I win Arizona, I can sweep into the South and South Carolina, which ought to be a good state for me. It has a very strong Christian base. Trade protection was supposed to be his big issue. So it would--beating Buchanan there means a lot for Bob Dole.

JIM LEHRER: Yeah. Lee, the debate yesterday in Columbia, we ran excerpts of it here on the NewsHour last night. It made the front pages of every newspaper in the country today. Was that a really major event in terms of what the outcome could be tomorrow in South Carolina?

MR. BANDY: I don't think so. It was on between noon and 1 o'clock here live, and I don't think that many people watched it. Those who did see it found it entertaining. People down here like a good, hard fight, as long as it's clean, but I don't think anybody learned anything.

MR. SHIELDS: I thought it was a good debate, I really did, and I thought they threw punches. They didn't get into their set routine. You had, you had to agree that a debate is a job interview. You had a sense of who these people were. I thought that--I thought it was a brilliant move on the people running the debate. Lee was one of the questioners, to show the negative commercials, and just to hold the candidates accountable and watch them kind of squirm and bob and duck and weave and say, well, I was only answering somebody else. I thought it was a good debate. I thought it revealed.

MR. GIGOT: I agree with Mark. I thought it was revealing. You did get the personalities out there. Bob Dole was in there interrupting everybody and, you know, piping up, and Pat Buchanan I thought won the debate in just terms of debating points because he has that great skill with language. Unfortunately, I don't think a lot of people watched it. That's a problem.

JIM LEHRER: Maybe--Lee, finally on this, is there any kind of perceptible--usually on the night before an election like this people pick up movements of various kinds either up or down. Is there any measurable movement here, or any candidate who's discussion

particularly taking off or one that's falling like a rock as we speak?

MR. BANDY: Well, the person who seems to be fading fast down here is Lamar Alexander. Pat Buchanan, who was in the state today and had rallies all across the state, so he's trying to whip his troops up and get them excited, but he even talked today like he was not going to win it, and Forbes is not much of a factor here either. He came into the state for the first time yesterday. He's run about a million dollars' worth of advertising, but I don't detect his advertising has helped him here. South Carolinians like for you to come to the state and ask for their vote. He hasn't come, and so he hasn't shown up well in the polls.

JIM LEHRER: Yeah. Paul, bottom line is that it's unlikely that this will be a winnowing primary tomorrow, is that right, that those four will still be there on Sunday morning?

MR. GIGOT: They will still be there on Sunday morning, but as Lee pointed out, for Lamar Alexander, a fourth place finish or even a weak third, would be very damaging going into the states next Tuesday, where I think he does have to win, or else he can start refurnishing that Tennessee home.

MR. SHIELDS: He'll stay in, Jim, but he'll stay in, is he going to be dead man walking, I mean, like Phil Gramm nearly was after Iowa, or after Louisiana? I think that what Bob Dole wants is Bob Dole wants Steve Forbes to finish third, because Steve Forbes isn't going to go away. I mean, he's in. He's on for the duration. He'd like to get rid of Lamar Alexander.

MR. SHIELDS: That's right. He'd like to get rid of Lamar Alexander. If Lamar Alexander finishes fourth, I think it probably means the effective wrap-up of his campaign. I did want to say one thing about the debate that struck me. This is a campaign that's really without a theme. In each state, the race changes, from Iowa, where there was a heavy emphasis upon the moral climate of the United States and how it would have been poison in many people's minds to New Hampshire, it was economic anxiety and changed and then Arizona it was taxes, and yesterday in Lee Bandy's debate there in Columbia, all of a sudden--

MR. SHIELDS: Lee was there. He was the dean of South Carolina, a political journalist--journalism. They started arguing, Jim, about Dixie, playing Dixie. Pat wanted 'em to play Dixie, whether Shannon Faulkner ought to be banned permanently from the state--

MR. SHIELDS: Who went to the Citadel for a week and consequently has more military experience than either Lamar Alexander or Pat Buchanan, and then, then they got into whether the stars and bars should fly over the state capitol. I mean, it's really a campaign. That was all business is local. Tip O'Neill used to say all politics is local. Boy, they localized that race yesterday.

MR. GIGOT: I think there's an irony in the South Carolina potential outcome. If Bob Dole wins, I mean, who would have thought that the epitome of the old Midwestern Republican Party would have his campaign rescued in South Carolina by the vanguard of the new Social Christian right, and Bob Dole's getting an awful lot of those voters. I mean, a lot of them are voting with their hearts for Pat Buchanan but an awful lot of them are saying pragmatically Pat Buchanan is not the right messenger for us, and we're going for Dole because we think Dole can win. And if he looks back on six months from now, he may think the most important point of my campaign was that Hollywood speech on values because that suggested to those voters that I was on their side. discussion

JIM LEHRER: Lee, does your reporting bear that out, that big hunks of the Christian right voters in South Carolina are going to go for Dole?

MR. BANDY: Well, I don't know if there are big hunks or not. Bob Dole is getting the leadership of the Christian Coalition, but the Christian Coalition cannot control its followers, and I think the bulk of the followers are going with Pat Buchanan.

MR. SHIELDS: One thing that Lee touched on about the employers in South Carolina, one of the reasons I think that Pat Buchanan's message hasn't been as well received there is that these are employers who are not the record profits and then laying off 40,000 people, these are people, these are employers for whom life has been better for workers there. I mean, these are employers like Fuji, who have a record and a reputation of keeping people on the payroll and not discarding them like so many used Kleenex.

MR. SHIELDS: That's right. That is the Buchanan message, is that the heartless corporate chiefs who just discard people.

JIM LEHRER: Paul, Mark, two quick things, other things before we go, besides South Carolina: who's winning the debate in the Senate, well, the Senate debate about whether or not to extend the Whitewater Committee investigation? The Democrats blocked it.

JIM LEHRER: The Republicans said they're going to come back. Does anybody care? Is it a big deal?

MR. GIGOT: Well, I think that the Democrats, the Senate Democrats are doing something rare in politics, which is that they're taking a political risk by helping the President, taking and putting themselves and their credibility on the line, trying to block something, without knowing the outcome. I mean, they don't know what's going to happen with the special counsel, Ken Starr. They don't know if something else is going to pop out that would embarrass them later for having stood up and maybe filibustered an ongoing investigation, so they are taking something of a risk, and I think the Republicans feel they wouldn't mind having this debate going on for a little while, having the President cast--the Senate Democrats cast that vote to say let's shut it all down.

MR. SHIELDS: I think if the chairman of this committee were John Chafee of Rhode Island or Bill Cohen or Nancy Kassebaum of Kansas or Alan Simpson or Mark Hatfield, you know, I think there wouldn't be probably much consternation. I mean, Al D'Amato, the Senator from New York, is a visible supporter of Bob Dole's to the point where he kept everybody out of the ballot in New York, and they finally had to be put on there by discussion

judge's orders, so it's taken on a partisan--I think there's a lower risk there for the Democrats in taking on D'Amato. Now Phil Gramm, Sen. Dole's new best friend, has returned, and he's going to get on the committee and so I think there is a sense, as well, with the report this past week from Mr. Stevens, the former U.S. attorney here, the Republican U.S. attorney, and the FDIC, that there weren't more investigations in the Rose Law Firm, I don't think the risks are as great. The problem for the White House is every time you turn around, Jim, there's some more papers--

MR. SHIELDS: --that have been missing for two years that they've been trying to get ahold of, and they come up with, so--

JIM LEHRER: Yeah. And finally, the politics of the Cuban situation that, that--the discussion that Elizabeth has just ran. Are there domestic political ramifications involved in this at this point?

MR. GIGOT: Well, the domestic political ramifications are that Bill Clinton had to go along with the sanctions. I mean, this was an avalanche that he was either going to get run over by or try to get out in front of, and so he agreed essentially because he was--his veto, if he had vetoed the sanctions bill that the Republicans were offering against Cuba, it would have been overridden, and the Republicans are competing for the, with each other to--for the vote coming up in Florida, there's no question about that. I still don't think the President can win Florida unless the Republicans put Fidel Castro on the ticket, but he's trying at least to stay in the game by signing legislation.

MR. SHIELDS: Aside from the personal and human tragedy involved, Jim, this is where you show your bona fides as an anti-Communist. You're still tough on Communism.

MR. SHIELDS: That's the only place left. I mean, you can't do it in China, because you want to sell Q-tips to China, right? You know, and their slave labor we kind of overlook because we want to do some deals, but, you know, damn Castro, you can really get tough and get mad at his fatigues and all the rest of it, and I really think that's sadly what's--but it's, to put it squarely, Paul's right, to put it squarely on the ballot and on the agenda for the Florida primary.

MR. GIGOT: Could be a very important primary, although you can't tell a bit of difference between the four, among the four Republicans on the issue. They all seem to be--more or less agree on it, so I--politically it may matter if somebody can get to somebody's right.

MR. SHIELDS: If they start bidding on it. I mean, yesterday in South Carolina, I thought Pat Buchanan was going to say that his favorite American President in the 19th Century was Jefferson Davis. I mean, these guys will be organizing guerrilla raids.

JIM LEHRER: Right. Okay. Well, thank you, Mark and Paul, and Lee Bandy, thank you discussion

very much for joining us tonight from Columbia.

Program
Support
From:

PRIMARY FEVER

MARCH 1, 1996

TRANSCRIPT