NewsHour Online: Shields and Gigot review the State of the Union address

THE DAY AFTER

JANUARY 24, 1996

TRANSCRIPT

Political pundits, syndicated columnist Mark Shields, and "Wall Street Journal" columnist, Paul Gigot, analyze the aftermath of President Clinton's State of the Union address, Sen. Bob Dole's rebuttal, and Newt Gingrich's apparent change of heart.

MARGARET WARNER: Welcome back, gentlemen. All right, Mark. What are you hearing among Democrats and Republicans today, a day later, about the President's speech?
MARK SHIELDS: Basically, the consensus that has emerged, the conventional wisdom, is that Bill Clinton had a ten strike last night. There's a certain marveling at his technique. There's a critique. Boy, didn't he do it, wasn't he deft, wasn't it terrific? Not that he was persuasive, not that he was convincing, not that it was real, but wasn't it really something, and that Bob Dole, by contrast, did not look good. Margaret, it's impossible to examine Bill Clinton's performance last night without stating the importance of Newt Gingrich. Newt Gingrich's dominance of the political landscape, the impending threat he represents to Democrats, saved Bill Clinton from having any primary threat, or any primary challenge. Therefore, he could give his general election speech, he could say, "common ground" 14 times; he could salute the Republicans for their help on the balanced budget; he could salute Bob Dole's generation. I mean, it is absolutely remarkable, and it gives him all the latitude in the world that he could move to the right on the social and cultural issues that our panelists were talking about, and never fear any reprisals from the Democratic left, because they sit in awe and fear of Gingrich's dominance.
MARGARET WARNER: What the alternative is.
PAUL GIGOT: I think that's, that's pretty close to the truth. I mean, Republicans are a bit dazed, a little bit dazzled. They're sort of like looking at the magician who raises the woman up, you know, puts the hoop underneath, and people say, well, we know it's not real, but how does he do that anyway? It's sort of amazing, and, and I think they're impressed; a lot of them feel as if the President is using their rhetoric to run against his first term, his own first term, and they're amazed to see him do it.
MARGARET WARNER: And were Patrick McGuigan and Mike Barnicle both right when they said that they thought Dole really took a beating?
PAUL GIGOT: Well, I'm not--
MARGARET WARNER: As in the last 24 hours.
PAUL GIGOT: I think it depends on, on what you think his rules were and what you emphasize. If it was how he looked, he did look like a grumpy old man, and he looked old, he looked halting, the delivery was bad. But if you looked at what he said for the purposes to which he was using that language, he had to go out there and reassure his base. He had to go out there, undercut the President's credibility, and I think he did that.
MARGARET WARNER: Let's move on now to the--
MR. SHIELDS: The young Mike Barnicle, you know, is grumpy on occasion. Just one thing on Dole. Dole took a risk last night. Dole invited the fire and the criticism of the own--his own challengers for the nomination. I mean, there was Pat Buchanan out today saying he lacked vision and Lamar Alexander saying the same thing, so he had intra-party sniping and Clinton was free of it. It's a big, big difference the day after.
MARGARET WARNER: But is it a smart risk to take?
MARK SHIELDS: Well, we'll know, we'll know very shortly. I will say this, Margaret. The 1st of November, 1996, there will not be a single American citizen who will say, you know, I was going to vote for Bob Dole, but I really didn't like that State of the Union rebuttal. I mean, that is not going to be the determining factor, if he wins Iowa and wins New Hampshire in a convincing fashion.
MARGARET WARNER: Okay. Let's move on now to this rather interesting back-to-back we just saw with Newt Gingrich and Leon Panetta. Do you think, Paul, that Cynthia Tucker was right when she said that after this State of the Union speech in particular, Republicans decided they just had to take a different tact? In other words, what has triggered Gingrich's apparent change of heart?
PAUL GIGOT: I don't think it had--I think it had very little to do with the State of the Union Address. I think what it had to do with is the fact that the Republicans understand that they have to get something out of this Congress, and that with the long ball, the long pass broken up, no chance of a big deal, but they have to begin to make some incremental progress. And it's almost as if they switched roles. Bob Dole is now the bad cop out in Iowa, you know, carving up the President, and Newt Gingrich here is the good cop, because Newt Gingrich is not running for anything, except to reelect himself in the House as Speaker. He needs to show some progress and needs to get something done for this Congress.
MARK SHIELDS: I think Paul is right. I mean, the new Newt Gingrich which you saw tonight with Jim was, was not the vintage Gingrich, the combatant, the revolutionary, the leader of the, the new group. It was. It was very conciliatory, I mean, a very positive stone in the State of the Union, phrases like that that he spoke of. I think Paul's absolutely right. I mean, they're bereft of a record. They want to be able to show something. I mean, this revolution is something that we've got to take at least a couple of castles if we don't take the whole kingdom.
MARGARET WARNER: But is he going to be able to sell this to the Republican freshmen, who are basically saying no deal is better than a half deal or an incomplete deal?
PAUL GIGOT: Well, I think it depends on the terms of it, but for example, if he could get a family child tax credit out of this, that would be a significant payoff for an awful lot of these freshman constituents who were the social conservatives who want the government reduced, want some more money in their pockets. That would be a big win. If he could get some kind of reductions in spending, and then be able--have the Republican Congress be able to argue and the presidential candidate argue that the President stopped even more progress, I think that they might be willing to accept that if the alternative is nothing.
MARK SHIELDS: It's absolutely fascinating, Paul's mention about the tax credit and the social conservatives, which were, they were the ones who were pushing it. The social conservative agenda has been pushed so far off the primary, the Republican primary field, if you think about it, Steve Forbes emerges as the tax-cutting candidate, so dominated and exhausted the oxygen in that battle nobody's talking about outlaw the Victoria Secret catalog anymore, and I mean, it really has become a, you know, an entirely different race.
PAUL GIGOT: I think that's the President's next State of the Union Address.
MARK SHIELDS: Well--
MARGARET WARNER: But still, I mean, this is a huge change on Gingrich's part if you just watch this interview, I mean, him saying, well, once I was able to just give up the big dream, then just--
MARK SHIELDS: A day at a time.
MARGARET WARNER: Yeah.
PAUL GIGOT: But you have to remember, so much of his--
MARGARET WARNER: I mean, that doesn't sound very revolutionary anymore.
PAUL GIGOT: But so much of his, his attitude and all the political force was designed to be able to leverage the President to break with his party's left, to do a deal, and lock in these historical forms. Once that leverage didn't work, then you have to begin to say, all right, what do we do now, and I think that's, that's what you see the shift in, in tone and rhetoric.
MARGARET WARNER: And what did you make of Panetta's response? He was obviously, when you talked to Elizabeth, quite a bit more cautious.
MARK SHIELDS: Tentative, guarded, cautious, circumspect, not sure but, I mean, Newt Gingrich really did. I mean, he did, we said an obligation to look to the other side, to reach out a hand to the President. Now, that is a new Newt Gingrich.
MARGARET WARNER: Yeah.
MARK SHIELDS: I mean, that is somebody. They did, they misread Bill Clinton. They thought Bill Clinton would fold like an accordion, and he didn't. And that just, that stopped them cold. And I think Paul would agree with that assessment.
MARGARET WARNER: Okay. But going back to what Panetta said, he said, you know, we still would like to get this $700 billion in cuts that we all agree on. Why, Paul, won't Gingrich and the Republicans, or right now they don't seem willing to do that?
PAUL GIGOT: Well, because that would be, that would be handing the President credit for a balanced budget rhetorically that they think would not be real. In other words, if you, if the Republicans believe, and I think they're correct on the substance of this, that you cannot really balance the budget unless you deal with the great federal entitlement programs, Medicare and Medicaid, which suck up most of the money, which are growing 10 percent a year, as far as the eye can see, and unless you reform those programs, a balanced budget is really phony. So they're not going to give the President credit for that kind of a victory if he won't sign on the dotted line.
MARGARET WARNER: But then they also give up credit going to the voters next November--
PAUL GIGOT: Sure they do.
MARGARET WARNER: --of delivering--
PAUL GIGOT: Absolutely.
MARGARET WARNER: --on this huge promise they made.
MARK SHIELDS: The revolution fizzled, and I think it's impossible to look at what the Speaker did today and the timing of it and not to say that he wasn't tweaking the Majority Leader, Sen. Dole. I mean--
MARGARET WARNER: Explain that.
MARK SHIELDS: Well, it's--he says the President gave a great speech, terrific tone; it's time for us to offer the hand. You know, obviously, our guy didn't do much in the rebuttal. I mean, it was a way of saying we had to offer, we had to offer our swords or whatever, the court house at Appomattox, or whatever it was, the battleship Missouri, where they went to say we could work this out, and there was Bob Dole had let them down.
PAUL GIGOT: I think over-analysis, they have different roles. Bob Dole is running for the White House directly against Bill Clinton. Newt Gingrich is running for Speaker again, and to do that, he has to have some legislative achievement.
MARGARET WARNER: Finally, we did hear Tom Daschle, the Senate Democratic leader saying, we will want a clean debt limit, debt limit extension. Is there any light or distance between the White House and the Congressional Democrats on this, or do you think the President can bring 'em along to whatever he wants to do?
MARK SHIELDS: I think the President right now is as high as he has been in a long, long time. I think that the Hill Democrats will be a lot more deferential, respectful. They sense in him that he's on a political roll, that he has a political touch, that he has mastered the Republicans at this point, and he says we need these two or three elements and I'm going to accept them.
PAUL GIGOT: Yeah. I mean, he's in a strong position now. He has done what they wanted him to do, which is not to sign the Republican entitlement reforms, and having fought that fight, I think they're going to give him some room to do some other things.
MARGARET WARNER: Thanks, guys, very much. We'll be back Friday.

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