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« Back to The Candidates’ Think Tanks main page    Transcript for: The Candidates’ Think TanksTHINK TANKANNOUNCER: Brought to you in part by ADM, feeding the world is the biggest challenge of the new century. Outside the U.S. you'll find 96 percent of the world's population, inside you'll find the means to feed them. ADM, supermarket to the world. Additional funding is provided by the John M. Olin Foundation, the Lilly Endowment, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, and the Smith Richardson Foundation. (Musical break.) MR. WATTENBERG: Hello, I'm Ben Wattenberg. The presidential primary season is fast approaching. Who the candidates pick as their policy advisors can tell us a lot about where they might try to take the country. To discuss the thinkers behind the candidates are: Michael Barone, senior writer at U.S. News and World Report, and author of Our Country: The Shaping of America From Roosevelt to Reagan; E.J. Dionne, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of They Only Look Dead: Why Progressives Will Dominate the Next Political Era; Franklin Foer, associate editor for U.S. News and World Report, and David Kusnet, a visiting fellow at the Economic Policy Institute, and author of Speaking American: How the Democrats Can Win in the '90s. The topic before this house, the candidate's think tanks, this week on Think Tank. (Musical break.) MR. WATTENBERG: Where might Al Gore or George W. Bush, or Bill Bradley, or John McCain try to lead the country if elected to the presidency? One way to find out is to look at the teams they assemble to advise them. Governor George W. Bush is promoting what he calls compassionate conservatism, not everyone knows what Governor Bush means by that. Former Secretary of Education William Bennett and former Indianapolis Mayor Steven Goldsmith are two prominent advisors helping that philosophy take shape. And Al Gore pushes an agenda that he calls practical idealism, well who are the practical idealists advising him? One is Harvard University's Elaine Kamark (sp) who has been a long time Gore advisor, lending intellectual firepower to the vice president, so too is Bill Galston of the University of Maryland, a frequent guest on Think Tank. What about Senator Bill Bradley? In an interesting twist, he recently received the backing of financial guru David Smick, now Smick was a one time ally and advisor for former Republican vice presidential candidate Jack Kemp. Bradley has also long been in touch with Harvard University's Cornell West. Arizona Republican John McCain has kept the identity of his advisors close to the vest, although it is said that Henry Kissinger is among them. Sources close to McCain say, he prefers to rely on his own instincts and his full time Senatorial staff. For an in-depth look at the minds behind campaign 2000, we turn to our expert panel. Gentlemen, thank you for joining us. Let us proceed quickly with one question that has been troubling me. It is being said that, well, these two parties are turning into mush at the 49 yardline, and they are really the same. What do you think? MR. DIONNE: I think they're more at the 35 yardline. One is a center right party, one is a center left party. The Democrats aren't going to nationalize industry, the Republicans aren't going to rip up the whole social safety net, but there are big differences. If you put these advisors in a room they'd have some big arguments with each other. MR. WATTENBERG: David? MR. KUSNET: I think sometimes issues come up that remind the leaders of the parties that they speak for very different constituencies. And you see the minimum wage debate, where there's near unanimity among the democrats to raise the minimum wage, and the Republican's first instinct is how to -- since that's a popular issue, how to couple that with tax breaks for people at the top of the ladder. MR. WATTENBERG: So there is a difference? MR. KUSNET: There is a difference. MR. WATTENBERG: Frank. MR. FOER: My sense is that compassionate conservatism has been slightly misunderstood. I don't think it's really a policy of triangulation, moving the Republicans to the right, I think it's abandoning some of the party's allergic reaction to government. I think that people like Giuliani and Bush believe that you need to have a strong executive power in government, who can break up bureaucracies. MR. WATTENBERG: But, does that make them ever more like the Democrats? MR. FOER: But, the difference is that they want to use government toward very conservative ends. MR. BARONE: Well, I think there's a big premium this year for politicians to state their positions in consensus minded form. People hate the sort of confrontation, they want an end to arguments and bitterness and so forth, as if everybody in politics should just agree. But, when you look behind the consensus mood in which they frame their issues, you do see serious differences of opinion on issues between the Republicans and the Democrats. The Republicans tend to think that when you get more towards markets and competition things will work better. Democrats are headed, and to a surprising extent on healthcare, toward government regulation, government dictate and the idea that more government spending will solve problems. MR. WATTENBERG: Okay. So and I vote with you, although they are contrary to some of the received wisdom that it's preposterous that the two parties are really for the same thing. Now, let me ask you just again, very briefly, how important are these campaign advisors? MR. DIONNE: I think it depends on the candidate. I think if you look at Bush he has built his own think tank, I think his whole structure, with Goldsmith doing domestic policy, Larry Lindsay, who used to be on the Federal Reserve Board, doing economic policy. MR. WATTENBERG: A colleague of mine at American Enterprise Institute. MR. DIONNE: Right. Condalusa Rice (sp) doing foreign policy, I mean, he's built a very elaborate structure and you could see a kind of range -- MR. WATTENBERG: Christopher DeMuth who is the president of AEI is big in that operation. MR. DIONNE: Right, and Josh Bolton kind of oversees it. You see a big structure which represents a kind of range on the center right, to the right. And I think that those advisors shape his policy. MR. WATTENBERG: Paul Wolfowitz (sp) and Richard Perle (sp) also, right? MR. DIONNE: I think you're going to have some interesting internal arguments within the Bush camp, because within conservatism there are some serious arguments, whether you're talking about domestic policy on compassionate conservatism, or foreign policy between different kinds of realists and hard liners. MR. WATTENBERG: But, in Bush's case the think tank is quite important? MR. BARONE: I mean, he's got a structure for decision making in this thing that sounds a lot like the executive branch of the government, with sort of OMB figures being called in, and the department people and you get the kind of arguments that E.J. is talking about. It's really, of these four candidates that we're discussing, it's the closest thing that would move right into being in the government. Al Gore, on the other hand, has also brought in people, like Elaine Kamark you mentioned, with a lot of experience in government, who knows that sort of inside stuff very well. MR. FOER: It's important, I think, to mention that Bush needs a think tank approach, because he hasn't formulated his strategy for dealing with a lot of these big economic issues, or foreign policy. MR. WATTENBERG: He's never been a federal level politician, and the others all have. MR. BARONE: And Gore has been vice president, and as such, and under the vice presidency as reinvented by Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale, maintained by presidents of both parties ever since, he's been an integral part of government over the last seven years. And he may want to forget -- people forget some parts of that, but he's had genuine serious experience for the operation of government. MR. WATTENBERG: If you take it from a voter's perspective, is one to feel better because, well, candidate Jones or George Bush has really assembled a top flight, in-house think tank, with some people I respect, or is it better to say, well, John McCain has been in the Senate, or Bill Bradley has been in the Senate for all these years, he damn well knows what he thinks, he's got a senate staff, but he's my man because he doesn't have to rely on a bunch of people? MR. KUSNET: I think you can sort of almost see two polls of what an advisor can do, is with George W. Bush you almost have a sense that these advisors are being brought in as tutors, to help him bone up for some kind of exam that he needs to do a lot of work for. MR. BARONE: This was the case, in 1998 he spent a lot of time on exactly that. MR. KUSNET: And with Bob Reich, the former Labor Secretary and professor of economics endorsing Bill Bradley, that was more of a sense that he was a validator, it wasn't that Bradley was lacking in expertise on these issues, but if Bob Reich comes forward and says he's working with him, that validates Bradley's concern. MR. WATTENBERG: Now, Bill Bradley, as I recall, at least as Senator and even now, has been an ardent free trader, and Bob Reich, in his current incarnation at least, is not an ardent free trader. MR. KUSNET: That's not true. MR. WATTENBERG: That's not true? MR. KUSNET: No, Reich was always -- MR. WATTENBERG: I want to make a point here, David happens to also be my son-in-law, and he is directly contradicting me. But, go ahead. MR. KUSNET: Unless you define free trade as trade without rules, or trade only with rules that protect investors and intellectual property, and not with rules that protect anything else. Reich has always been something of a celebrator of the global economy. MR. BARONE: Ben, I think one of the things we're seeing is that a Gore or a Bush, with their more elaborate campaign think tank structures, and Gore's experience in the executive branch of government, are probably more ready to kind of move in and superintend the presidency, which consists of these huge staffs, the necessity for which I'm not sure, but we do have them, and all those slots to fill. A Bradley or a McCain would have a lot more slots to fill with people that we don't know who they would be yet. MR. FOER: Would it be fair to say that they're working out of a senatorial mode of management of a staff? MR. BARONE: Of a staff that's much more of the size of a Senate staff. When Bill Bradley was in the Senate, and on the tax reform back for example, he did not have a large staff, he has one or two major staffers that he worked with, and he worked with other senators and with House members himself, very effectively. But, it was a small operation. Bush now has this big operation, Gore is used to the big operation of the White House, of the Clinton-Gore White House. MR. WATTENBERG: And if he turned to athletes, some of us would hope it would be to Charles Barkley (sp) not to Bill Walton, is that right? MR. BARONE: Well, I would think so, Ben. But, the fact is, as Woodrow Wilson once said that the presidency in the modern term may be limited to scholarly athletes, of which there was a limited supply. MR. DIONNE: I feel like making a case for Bill Walton, but I won't. I think the interesting thing about Bradley is that he has built more a network than a think tank. And I think that's part of the contrast between him and Bush. Bradley has always liked assembling groups of intellectuals around him to kick policy around. You know, when you talk to people around town, there are people who are not formal Bradley advisors, but with work he has done at places like the Aspen Institute he's run into a lot of policy types, so he tends to bring them together, pick their brains on the issue at hand that he happens to be interested in, and then moves on to the next group. So there would be a group of people he might draw from, but it's not structured as formally as the Bush structure. And I think those are two models we're seeing in this campaign. MR. KUSNET: I think what you're describing is the Bill Clinton model, in the '92 campaign, and certainly early in the administration, he was at the hub of an enormous network of experts on social and economic policy, and even the cultural dimensions of public issues, that he would call -- that he would draw upon personally, and he had some relationship with. I'm not sure that any candidate now has anything approaching that kind of eclectic range of intellectual interests, or acquaintances. Bradley might come close, Gore might come close. MR. DIONNE: I think the Bush operation has -- MR. KUSNET: But, that's not deep, I don't think you'd find -- with all due respect to the governor, I don't think you'd find -- I mean, there are stories of Clinton calling up anyone from William Julius Wilson to Martin Marty late at night, and discussing the fine points of social policy, or the role of faith based institutions in public life. I don't think anyone believes that George W. Bush is personally calling up a wide range of intellectuals and engaging them in the discussions as a peer. MR. DIONNE: I would disagree with that somewhat, I think that he's -- MR. FOER: Is Naomi Wolf not a sign of eclecticism? MR. DIONNE: No, I think it's pretty clear that George W. Bush has spent serious time with, and concerning serious public policy experts from a fairly wide range of thought in the Republican party. He hasn't had these serendipitous, late night conversations. But, I wonder if from retrospect those Clinton things really were very productive, in terms of intelligent, sustained public policy effort. MR. FOER: And I also think -- I think Bill Bradley is pretty eclectic in the group that he draws from. Who was the person in front and center at the debate? There was his wife, who is a professor, and Cornell West, who is a self-avowed -- as one point in his career, a self-avowed Marxist. But, I think Bradley has been able to span the spectrum. And during the '86 tax reform he spent a lot of time talking to Jeffrey Bell, who is now Gary Bauer's top advisor. MR. DIONNE: And who was his opponent in the 1978, which is very interesting that they had become close. It's true, you could form an organization called Marxists, investment bankers, and supply siders for Bradley. I mean, that is pretty eclectic. MR. WATTENBERG: But, the Smick thing, he would be a Kemp supply sider going over to Bradley. MR. BARONE: As somebody who was advising Bill Bradley in the 1978 campaign, he did take in an intellectually serious -- MR. WATTENBERG: You were -- MR. BARONE: I was working for Peter Hart, who was his pollster, so I was perhaps a step away, but I was involved in some meetings. Bill Bradley did take seriously the arguments of Jeffrey Bell, his Republican opponent, who was an advocate of the supply side tax cut. At that time most Democrats were just treating that as -- well, the term voodoo economics, invented by George Bush, as crazy. You know, you had to have high taxes to have government operate. Bradley took a somewhat different view, and that led in time to the '86 Tax Reform Act, which lowered rates and eliminated preferences. What's interesting about Bradley is he then supported the '90 and '93 tax increases, which tended to raise rates and put in more preferences. And we'll have to see if he gets engaged with Al Gore, who is in favor of the Clinton policy of targeted tax cuts, which is another way of saying tax preferences, or if he follows through on his own initiative in '86 where he said, let's get rid of the preferences and have lower rates. MR. WATTENBERG: Let me ask you a question, with the intense media scrutiny going on of each of these candidates, and we could mention, by the way, Steve Forbes who is a one man think tank, and we could mention Pat Buchanan who is another one man think tank, but let's stick to the four, isn't there a premium and a bonus put on capturing a big name, in Bradley's case Robert Reich, so that you're sort of in a bidding contest, not to get the person's advice, but to get the person to give a press conference and say, I'm for Bill Bradley and I'm a smart guy, and some people agree with me, even if the candidate himself thinks, I don't believe what Reich says? I mean, is that going on? MR. DIONNE: I think you gain credibility when you have somebody with you whom a lot of people respect. Steve Goldsmith, the Mayor of Indianapolis, is a good example of that. My experience is that people all across the political spectrum, even liberals who disagree with Goldsmith, respect him as somebody who is innovative, who cares a lot about poor people, and has tried to do a lot of interesting things in Indianapolis. To have him with you helps Bush because people say, well, maybe he thinks like him. And I think you can reproduce that among some of the other candidates. MR. BARONE: George W. Bush on foreign policy is the only one of these four candidates who hasn't been a member of Congress, hasn't had a voting record on foreign policy, hasn't had a policy engagement on it. And he's taking care to get some very top level people, you're talking about Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, George Shultz, the former Secretary of State, and according to the account Condalusa Rice, the former provost of Stanford, people who by their own accounts say that he has engaged them seriously in discussions on foreign policy. That's an attempt to give assurance to voters that Mr. Bush, who has no record of foreign policy except some dealings with Mexico, because he comes from Texas. MR. FOER: Politically I think it helps him, as well. He's got to reassure social conservatives that he understands where they're coming from, so having William Bennett or Marvin Aleski, or Ralph Reid talking to you about policy and politics -- MR. WATTENBERG: This is Governor Bush? MR. FOER: This is Governor Bush. The other thing is that I think it really helps -- I think Bradley and Gore are both guys who kind of figure themselves somewhat intellectual, and I think that they like the idea of having these intellectuals kind of clustered around them, even if they're not actually giving them any sort of really serious, substantive advice a lot of the time. MR. WATTENBERG: What about the McCain idea, apparently they are backgrounded from his shop that they really don't want to -- normally, these bucket shops are out there saying, so and so advises, so and so advises, he's taken the position apparently that he has his own staff, and there's a Senate staff, he knows what he thinks. Is that a good strategy? MR. DIONNE: I'm not sure. I think this year, and Michael said there's a premium on consensus, there's also a premium on authenticity. People want a candidate like Bradley or McCain who does not seem to be a creature of political handlers. I think there also may be an increasing uneasiness with a candidate who needs advisors to teach him the basics of foreign or domestic policy. I don't think people want a candidate who is not involved in an intellectual exchange with people of like minded goals, and specific knowledge. I think that may be carrying the notion of authenticity too far. MR. WATTENBERG: Hold on one second, we are going to run out of time shortly. Let me present a few hypotheticals of what the next president might have to face and considering their advisors and who they would be listening to, let's see where they come out. And these are going to have to be short answers so we can go around the room. Alan Greenspan is reappointed by Bill Clinton and one year later he retires. Who does the next president pick? MR. DIONNE: Well, a Democrat might well pick Bob Rubin, on the Republican side I'm not sure whom he would pick. MR. WATTENBERG: And Bob Rubin would not be far from where Alan Greenspan stands on most of those issues? MR. DIONNE: No, ever so slightly different, but not very different. MR. KUSNET: But, E.J., I think you'd find a very similar range of views with Al Gore and Bill Bradley. I think where the example E.J. gave shows how the inside baseball of policy advisors might play out, because with the famous battle of the Bobs in the Clinton administration, between Bob Rubin representing the fiscal conservative view point, and Bob Reich representing more of an economic populist viewpoint. And if Bradley goes in deeply indebted, as well as advised by Bob Reich, it would be interesting how that might play out in his relationship with Bob Rubin. MR. WATTENBERG: Bob Reich, with all due respect, would not be confirmed -- MR. KUSNET: I'm not saying that Reich would be the next Greenspan. MR. BARONE: He doesn't have an economics Ph.D. for goodness sake. MR. KUSNET: He does not. MR. BARONE: He's a lawyer. MR. FOER: Remember, Bradley didn't vote to approve Greenspan in the first place, and he's made noises that, well, I'm not sure who I'm going to appoint. The second in command of the Fed right now is an African American guy named Ferguson, Roger Ferguson, who I think would be a likely candidate. Bush, I don't know, Lindsay might be a likely. MR. BARONE: Who had been on the Fed. Yes, I think a Republican president would probably pick somebody who they thought would go along with similar policies to Alan Greenspan. I don't think a Democrat would get too far off that. It's a little hard to say, though, when you're talking about the more likely staffed candidates, Bill Bradley and John McCain, than it is to say about the heavily staffed candidates. MR. WATTENBERG: Next hypothetical, let's go the other way, a year from now to a year and a half from now a Supreme Court vacancy comes up, who would these guys go to? MR. BARONE: Well, Al Gore, who always says he doesn't like litmus tests for Supreme Court, in fact, has a litmus test for Supreme Court, which he won't call as such, but it is. The Democrats have to go with somebody who is with the proposition that Roe v. Wade is good constitutional law. The fact that most constitutional scholars, including most of them who vote Democratic think that it's crackpot law, not good law, they're going to have to squirm a little to find people like that. But, they will do so. And the Republicans, similarly, will appoint somebody who takes the view that most legal scholars do, which is that Roe v. Wade is crazy as a constitutional law decision, and hope that the court will reverse itself. MR. WATTENBERG: Frank? MR. FOER: One interesting thing -- MR. WATTENBERG: Do you buy that? MR. FOER: I actually do buy that, and -- are you surprised, Michael? MR. BARONE: Go ahead. MR. FOER: And one thing that might be interesting is that Bush's father ran into a lot of problems with his judicial appointees, there was some question of whether they were really heavy weight enough. So I wouldn't be surprised to see him nominating somebody like a Richard Posner to the bench, or an Epstein, or some real solid, very esteemed, conservative legal scholar. MR. WATTENBERG: David, who is going to -- who would pick who for that -- MR. KUSNET: I imagine the Gore and Bradley nominations would be similar. The issue that Michael raised is what would be interesting, it might be a difference between the George W. Bush corporate style and the John McCain lone wolf style would be the degree to which either one's nominations would be more acceptable to the organized religious right. It seems that as someone who is involved more in Republican constituency power, George W. Bush I think is more likely to have made commitments to the organized religious right than John McCain. MR. WATTENBERG: Can you give me a for example appointee? MR. KUSNET: I imagine the name that sort of -- I imagine for the organized religious right the name that is what they don't want is another David Souter. That's the face of the elder George Bush that they don't like. MR. BARONE: They want somebody probably with a settled judicial record in their direction, and there are some activist, conservative judges on the U.S. Courts of Appeals that would fill that bill. MR. WATTENBERG: Like Larry Silverman or someone? MR. BARONE: Yes, the Fourth Circuit has several. MR. DIONNE: The circuit that sits in Virginia is full of -- George Bush might appoint. I suspect that Bradley or Gore will look for moderate liberals much like Clinton did, who could be confirmed by a Senate likely to be Republican. I mean, he is my friend, so I'll throw him out as an example, Mayor Garland, who is a judge on the Court of Appeals here, Cass Sunseen (sp) is a very interesting professor of law at Chicago. Cass may have written too many interesting books to be confirmed. We know that that makes it hard. But, I think that Gore and Bradley would look for people who could -- who would be more moderately liberal, but could get confirmed. MR. WATTENBERG: This is under the assumption that the Republicans keep control of the Senate, which is likely but not certain. MR. DIONNE: Not certain. Thank you, Michael Barone, E.J. Dionne, Frank Foer, and David Kusnet. And thank you. We at Think Tank encourage feedback from our viewers, particularly via email, it is very important to us. For Think Tank, I'm Ben Wattenberg. ANNOUNCER: We at Think Tank depend on your views to make our show better. Please send your questions and comments to New River Media, 1150 Seventeenth Street, Northwest, Washington, D.C. 20036, or email us at thinktank@pbs.org. To learn more about Think Tank, visit PBS Online at www.pbs.org. And please let us know where you watch Think Tank. This has been a production of BJW, Incorporated, in association with New River Media, which are solely responsible for its content. Brought to you in part by ADM, feeding the world is the biggest challenge of the new century. Outside the U.S. you'll find 96 percent of the world's population, inside you'll find the means to feed them. ADM, supermarket to the world. Additional funding is provided by the John M. Olin Foundation, the Lilly Endowment, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, and the Smith Richardson Foundation. (End of program.) Back to top  Think Tank is made possible by generous support from the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, the Donner Canadian Foundation, the Dodge Jones Foundation, and Pfizer, Inc. ©Copyright Think Tank. All rights reserved. 
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