September 22, 2000

GWEN IFILL, host: I'm Gwen Ifill. Good evening and welcome to WASHINGTON WEEK. Oil and water may not mix, but oil and politics certainly does. The White House announced today they will dip into the nation's emergency oil reserve to head off high prices and short supply this winter.

A big policy turnaround for the White House, wasn't it, Alan Murray?

Mr. ALAN MURRAY (The Wall Street Journal): Sure is, Gwen. This is the first time we will have sold oil from that strategic petroleum reserve since the war against Iraq. And why are we doing it? One, to moderate the increase in home heating oil prices; but, two, to elect Al Gore president.

IFILL: That story, plus the gender wars; the big China trade boat and the end of the Whitewater investigation, all tonight on WASHINGTON WEEK IN REVIEW.

Announcer: This is WASHINGTON WEEK IN REVIEW for Friday, September 22nd, 2000. Now here's moderator Gwen Ifill.

IFILL: Ever wonder whether candidates are ever completely truthful on the campaign trail? Well, here's my pick for true honesty, courtesy of George W. Bush and "The Oprah Win--Winfr--aagh--The Oprah Winfrey Show."

(Excerpt from "The Oprah Winfrey Show")

Ms. OPRAH WINFREY: Tell us about a time when you needed forgiveness.

Governor GEORGE W. BUSH (Republican Presidential Candidate): Right now.

Ms. WINFREY: I'm lookin' for specifics.

Gov. BUSH: I know you are, but I'm running for president.

(End of excerpt)

IFILL: That's honesty. Tonight we catch up with the presidential race and tie up loose ends of years-long battles involving politics, policy and the courts. Eight years ago, most of America heard the word `Whitewater' for the first time. Now $52 million and 14 convictions later, it's over, Bill and Hillary Clinton never even charged with a crime. But were they exonerated? We take a look.

Congress finally votes overwhelmingly to establish permanent normal trade relations with China. Could this long-awaited vote with its promise of economic prosperity for both sides of the Pacific be Bill Clinton's final foreign policy victory?

Gender politics is back, as the two major candidates for president spend the week visiting school rooms, maternity wards and daytime talk-show hosts. Presumably, this is where one finds women who vote.

And on this, the first day of fall, a politician's thoughts turn to how to bring down the skyrocketing price of oil.

Here to talk about these stories, the reporters and columnists covering them. Michael Duffy, Time magazine's Washington bureau chief; David Sanger, White House correspondent for The New York Times; Elizabeth Arnold, political reporter for National Public Radio; and Alan Murray, the Washington bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal.

Analysis: White House announces it will dip into nation's emergency oil reserve to head off high oil prices and short supply this winter

GWEN IFILL, host: Are we paying too much for our oil? Is supply enough to meet demand this winter? The White House, walking in lockstep with Vice President Al Gore, says a crisis is at hand.

(Excerpt from videotape)

Vice President AL GORE: It's hurting small businesses, it's hurting those on fixed incomes, it's hurting young families; and the prospect for even higher prices ahead is--is gonna cause even more trouble unless we act now.

(End excerpt)

IFILL: George W. Bush immediately cried foul. `The White House is playing politics with the issue,' he said, `just to help get Al Gore elected.'

(Excerpt from videotape)

Governor GEORGE W. BUSH (Republican Presidential Candidate): The strategic petroleum reserve should not be used as a short-term political fix for somebody whose administration has been asleep at the switch.

(End excerpt)

IFILL: So, Alan Murray, is this politics or is it policy?

Mr. ALAN MURRAY (The Wall Street Journal): Well, there is a problem out there, I don't think there's any question about that. Home heating oil supplies, in particular, are down 20 percent, 30 percent from where they were last year. If we have a cold winter, that's gonna mean real hardship, particularly for people in the Northeast who--who heat their homes with home heating oil. But there's no question that there's a lot of politics going on here as well.

Look at what happened this week. On Wednesday, a couple of my colleagues at The Wall Street Journal got their hands on a memo from the Treasury secretary to the president saying, `Here is why you should not sell oil out of the strategic petroleum reserve. You shouldn't do it because it won't have much effect on home heating oil prices. You shouldn't do it because it can easily be offset by OPEC just cutting back its production a bit. And you shouldn't do it because the strategic petroleum reserve is there for supply disruptions such as, for instance, Saddam Hussein deciding to cut off his supply of oil.' That was Wednesday.

On Thursday, the vice president, on the campaign trail, said, `Go out there, sell some oil from the strategic petroleum reserve.' And then today, the secretary of Energy announced that, lo and behold, the administration was going to do exactly what the vice president asked, ignoring the advice from the Treasury secretary.

IFILL: Even the vice president, just in February, said exactly the opposite of what he said this week.

Mr. MURRAY: Sure. A--and for the very reasons that the Treasury secreta--secretary eloquently laid out. But--but, look, you're looking at the possibility of--of a bunch of people right before the election being hit with higher bills for home heating oil, and--and Al Gore didn't want to be in a position of looking like he hadn't done anything to deal with it.

Mr. MICHAEL DUFFY (Time Magazine): Alan, will...

Mr. MURRAY: He needed that.

Mr. DUFFY: ...will 30 million barrels--that's what they're talking about today--will that make a difference? Does that really affect how much we pay?

Mr. MURRAY: Well, look, it had some effect on the price of oil in oil markets today. Whether that continues for any length of time, though, is an open question. I mean, h--the effect that--this is a relatively small amount of oil when you look about the--look at the huge amounts that slosh about the markets every day. And unless--unless the government can--can convince the players in the market that it can continue to do that, have that sort of effect, I don't think it'll have...

Mr. DAVID SANGER (The New York Times): Well, Alan, for exactly the reasons that the Treasury secretary, Larry Summers, laid out in his memo, don't we have reason to doubt that the government really is willing to do much more of this? I mean, right now they've released maybe 5 percent of the strategic petroleum reserve. But anything much more than that would really open themselves up to exactly that criticism we heard from Bush.

Mr. MURRAY: Sure. I think it's largely a token effort, but it enabled the vice president to say, `Hey, I've done something.' And it also gave him an opportunity, frankly, to attack Bush for his ties to the oil companies, somewhat disingenuously, I might add. The vice president, on the campaign trail, is saying over and over again, `This is the big oil companies, the big oil companies, the big oil companies.' In fact, there's not much evidence that the problem we're looking at right now has very much to do with the big oil companies. It has more to do with just the--the supply of oil relative to increased demand.

IFILL: Elizabeth.

Ms. ELIZABETH ARNOLD (National Public Radio): Alan, how--how does the vice president, who wrote "Earth in the Balance," reconcile his conservation approach to energy policy and--and basically bringing--wanting to bring down the price of gas so that we can all drive our SUVs pain-free and--and cheaply?

Mr. MURRAY: Well, it's a good question. Actually, both Governor Bush and Vice President Gore have, in the past, advocated higher prices for oil. Governor Bush did it in the context of low oil prices, saying that it was bad for the energy industry in Texas. And as you point out, Vice President Gore did it in his book "Earth in the Ba--Balance," saying that higher prices for oil would be good for the environment, reduce the consumption of--of fossil fuel. So both of them find themselves in a--in a--a somewhat different situation. To be fair, the price of oil is much higher today than it was when they both made those comments.

IFILL: The last time they did this was during the Persian Gulf War. Th--was the strategic petroleum oil reserve supposed to be guarding against disruptions in international-national security or was it supposed to be guarding against political domestic disruptions?

Mr. MURRAY: Oh, it--well, it certainly wasn't intended for political purposes, and it wasn't intended to try and manage the price of oil, which some would argue that that's where we're d--what they're doing right now. In fact, the law says you can't use it for that; you have to use it for dis--supply disruptions. Secretary Richardson argued today that this is a supply disruption, but, in fact, what they're trying to do is moderate that spike in home heating oil prices.

Analysis: Gender gap and politics

GWEN IFILL, host: Well, from the politics of oil to the politics of politics. Daytime television was never so popular on the campaign trail. Oprah Winfrey got a kiss from George W. Bush, a hug from Al Gore; and both men hoped they got a lot of attention from women voters.

Elizabeth, it's all about that gender gap we keep hearing about, isn't it?

Ms. ELIZABETH ARNOLD (National Public Radio): It is. It's also about 22 million viewers, and most of them women, who watch "The Oprah Show." Gwen, remember in '92 when we were groaning about having to sit around on the steps of "Phil Donahue" and "Larry King" and realizing that these talk shows were gonna be a big part of campaigning? Oprah's here to stay, too, I think. Letterman said it best when--when he was commenting on the vice president's appearance on Oprah. He said, `Al, you go, girl.' But...

IFILL: Which means exactly what?

Ms. ARNOLD: Well, you know, there is a gender gap going on, and it's more dramatic than ever before. Early on, Governor Bush was making inroads with women, largely because of the appeal of his compassionate conservatism message. At the same, the Clinton scandal, Clinton fatigue; that was sort of keeping women from going to Gore. They weren't feeling real good about him. And--and that's completely changed now. Gore's numbers have--have--have gone way up, in large part because of women; and Bush's numbers in terms of women have gone down.

I--I've been trying to figure it out, Gwen. I've been talking to a lot of women. Just yesterday headed out to the suburbs, coffee shops, everywhere, grocery stores, talking to particularly older women. And it's pretty simple. They tell me--one woman in particular said, `Look, I was--months ago I was embarrassed to be a Democrat. I wasn't feeling real good about Al Gore, even though I knew he didn't have anything to do with this Monica Lewinsky thing.' And then along came the vice presidential pick, the convention. I saw Al Gore up there with his wife, with his daughters; I saw the kiss. Al Gore emerged as his own man and, in particular, he emerged as a family man. And then he followed it up in the last couple of weeks with some very strategic appearances that you alluded to, maternity wards, classrooms, talking about HMO protections for--specifically for women. He's really honed in on this vote, and his numbers are going up and, in large part, it's because of these women who are "coming home" to Al Gore.

Mr. ALAN MURRAY (The Wall Street Journal): Elizabeth, Al Gore's advantage among women doesn't seem to be all that different from the general advantage that Democrats seem to have among women in congressional races. What is it about women and Democrats?

Ms. ARNOLD: Well, there--there are a couple different things. We should point out that Bush actually does well among women who are married and who are under 50 and who are actually feeling pretty good economically. We--we make a mistake when we assume that there's sort of a solid bloc of women, that women all vote the same. But it really is women--we women--myself--we all vote pocketbook. But women in particular are risk-averse. They feel they balance the checkbook, they're last hired, first fired, they don't make as much money, so they're a little bit more feeling not so secure about the economy as men. And--and that--that's where Al Gore sort of hones in and he's basically just taken a look at all those things that--that make women very uneasy about their pocketbook and--and addressed them.

And Bush, on the other hand, does well with women who are feeling comfortable about their economic situation, but less comfortable morally, about the moral decline or the moral situation of the country. And--and--and for years, in the last couple of elections, this gender gap has been there, and--and you can really see it. It's--it's very stark. The married, under 50, women with kids at home go Republican; and the single older, single younger women a little more worried about their economic situation go Democratic. It was just in this case they didn't do it early on. They're doing it now.

Mr. DAVID SANGER (The New York Times): Elizabeth, how is this playing out in New York in the race between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Rick Lazio? There were some suggestions last week that some people thought Lazio was being too aggressive walking across the stage to challenge Mrs. Clinton.

Ms. ARNOLD: Well, there's a gender gap in that race as well, and you see large numbers of women are going behind Hillary Clinton. It's very simplistic to think that women vote for women. They--they really don't do that. But that debate...

Mr. SANGER: In fact, it was the opposite for a while in the polls.

Ms. ARNOLD: Yeah. Well, the debate, for--for a lot of New Yorkers, they'd never really seen--they'd never really formed an--an opinion of Rick Lazio. That was the first real chance they got, and--and he was--he came across as harsh. He came across as aggressive, walking over there. And--and a lot of folks didn't feel good about it, mostly women, and they're lining up behind Hillary Clinton.

IFILL: Quickly.

Mr. MICHAEL DUFFY (Time Magazine): Real quickly, Elizabeth, now that Gore has lured some of these women back to his column, has he got a lock on them or could he lose them again? This is a fluid race.

Ms. ARNOLD: Oh, sure, he could lose them again. I think basically Bush's message to a lot of women right now is too general. He says, `Look at my tax cut plan, and that's gonna be good for you.' If he starts getting specific, if he starts doing some of the same kinds of things that Al Gore is doing in terms of health care and job security, th--women are up for grabs.

IFILL: Thanks a lot, Elizabeth.

Analysis: Congress votes overwhelmingly to establish permanent normal trade relations with China

GWEN IFILL, host: A landmark agreement between the United States and China paved the way for this--this week for open markets and, if the White House is to be believed, other freedoms as well. Is this agreement all it seems, David Sanger?

Mr. DAVID SANGER (The New York Times): Well, parts of it are, Gwen, and parts of it aren't. This has been a remarkable fight--it's gone on for years now--between big business, which wanted permanent trade relations with China so that they could trade without the fear that Congress would take away the privileges, you know, each year. On the other side were labor and environment groups and human rights groups who said that this would only encourage the Chinese, and we would--we would lose all of our leverage over them. In the end, the vote wasn't even close. The Senate voted for this by 83 to 15. Now compare that to 1992, when in the vote just three years after Tiananmen Square 60 senators voted to revoke China's trade privileges, and they would have if there hadn't been a veto by President Bush at the time.

IFILL: And the difference was, this time?

Mr. SANGER: Well, the difference was that the argument that Bill Clinton's been making, that engagement has to be given a chance, that you really can get much further with the Chinese if you work with them, if you show them that you're a reliable partner; that argument has begun to--to seep in. And there's been a lot of lobbying and a lot of money behind it.

Mr. ALAN MURRAY (The Wall Street Journal): David, a year ago, there was a lot of angst in Washington about the threat that the Chinese posed to our national security, either because they were stealing our secrets or because they were waving missiles at Taiwan, various reasons. Now, of course, Wen Ho Lee, the scientist who was accused of stealing secrets and passing them to the Chinese, has been released; no charges. And the angst seems to have died down somewhat. Is there a--a big change here?

Mr. SANGER: It--it has, Alan, and a lot of things broke the White House's way. The first was that the Wen Ho Lee case, as you say, went away to some degree, and that took a lot of the venom out of the opponents, particularly on the right-wing opponents of this bill.

A couple of other things went their way. The campaign finance investigations, whether China was trying to manipulate the elections; that all disappeared. China didn't do anything terribly aggressive toward Taiwan. What China did do however, was continue to crack down on dissidents at home. And there, when President Clinton makes the argument that trade will help improve this, so far, there--there's very little evidence.

Mr. MICHAEL DUFFY (Time Magazine): Has there been--is it easy to tell what would have happened had this not passed this week? What's--what would have been the--the downside if this just hadn't gone through?

Mr. SANGER: Well, it's a fascinating question, Mike, because the argument that President Clinton made that seemed to resonate the most with the senators was, `If you don't do this, it puts us into a position of conflict with the Chinese. They will conclude that we're trying to contain them economically and militarily, and you're setting yourself up for 10, 20 years of confrontation.' And in the end, it was that negative argument that Sandy Berger, the president's national security adviser, and others say really struck home, really made the senators think that they had to cast a yes vote.

IFILL: Elizabeth?

Ms. ELIZABETH ARNOLD (National Public Radio): David, here in the Pacific Northwest, this vote has really been hailed as--as having a phenomenal impact on the economy. Has that been exaggerated?

Mr. SANGER: I'm sure it has been to some degree, but the Northwest will probably see some of the--the biggest benefits. Boeing, high-tech companies--Microsoft--are certainly going to be the ones who will benefit the most because they don't essentially compete with existing Chinese industries. The people who are gonna have a hard time are those who want to come in and bring steel or cars into China, places where state-owned enterprises in China employ thousands, millions of people. And the government knows that if true competition comes in very quickly, those people are gonna be out of work; and out of people--out-of-work people tend to be angry people.

IFILL: The people who are the most upset, speaking of angry people, about this all along was organized labor...

Mr. SANGER: Mm-hmm.

IFILL: ...and human rights activists. Are they still as upset?

Mr. SANGER: The human rights activists had a lot of nasty things to say about Congress this week. It was fascinating, 'cause labor was dead silent. And that's because we're seven weeks from an election, less, and they have no place to go. They really can't go to--to Bush on this. Bush was also in favor of this bill. And so they stayed almost completely quiet this week.

IFILL: And they launched their biggest-ever advertising campaign on behalf of Al Gore, so maybe he--he m--he made this a--it was a good bet for him.

Analysis: End of the Whitewater investigation

GWEN IFILL, host: Well, when the whi--first Whitewater story broke--don't we remember it well?--in 1992, none of us knew what it would spiral into. An obscure land deal became the leaping-off point for investigations that would come to encompass missing files, Monica Lewinsky, suspicious e-mails, Travel Office firings, Vince Foster's suicide and impeachment. Now it's all over. But how did it ever get so big, Michael Duffy?

Mr. MICHAEL DUFFY (Time Magazine): Long, long ago, in a galaxy far...

IFILL: Right.

Mr. DUFFY: ...far away, there was a little bank named Morgan Guaranty Trust and a little white--a little land deal called the Whitewater that we eventually would come to know a lot about. Now what happened this week is the office of the independent counsel finally closed the books on the scandal that begat, as you pointed out, all the other scandals that, really, in some ways, defined the Clinton years.

For six years, three different independent counsels spent most of their time, before Monica Lewinsky came along, trying to decide whether Mr. and Mrs. Clinton had broken some laws in relation to a really bad land deal they made back in 1982 and, then once they came to Washington, whether they had obstructed justice and tried to impede those investigations. And this week, the independent counsel, Robert Ray, said--and I want to quote this language because it's--it's kind of interesting language--he had, quote, "determined that the evidence was insufficient to prove beyond a reasonable doubt any criminal activity."

IFILL: Which is not the same thing as saying...

Mr. DUFFY: `It's over, they're cleared.'

IFILL: Right.

Mr. DUFFY: But that's what it means. It--it's--it sounds like grudging language, but that's actually the standard most lawyers use--most prosecutors use in the independent counsel's office; and it's been used against Republicans and Democrats. So that's fair.

What this means is, obviously, for Hillary Clinton, who's running in the Senate race in New York, she doesn't have to worry about Whitewater anymore, if she ever did. But i--it's also a reminder of just what a bad law the independent counsel stature had--statute was, particularly in the hands of indiscreet prosecutors. It really--it--and it was the can opener--this--this--this original land deal which the Clintons weren't particularly forthcoming about and no one re--inside the White House really knew very much about it. There was so much confusing--confusion and distrust, even inside the White House, about where--what this thing was about that it became the can opener for all these other scandals: Paula--Paula Jones, right up to Monica and--and the impeachment scandal.

Mr. ALAN MURRAY (The Wall Street Journal): Michael, it--it seems pretty clear it wasn't a good idea for the governor of Arkansas, now the president of the United States, to get into a land deal with a guy who ran a regulated business...

Mr. DUFFY: Right.

Mr. MURRAY: ...savings and loan. But I'm struck by the fact that most of what we know about this was in that very first article in The New York Times back in 1992. Why did it take this long for the government to conclude that it didn't have a case here?

Mr. DUFFY: Remember, it took a year for them just to decide we needed an independent counsel, and then it took the Clinton--the Clinton folks about a year or two--or sometimes longer--to decide whether they were going to cooperate. You know, you remember there were billing records that got lost for 18 months. Documents turned up in the back of cars mysteriously. One turned up after a tornado.

IFILL: That's right.

Mr. DUFFY: You know, you--it had novelistic qualities.

Mr. MURRAY: It did.

Mr. DUFFY: I mean, you know, documents disappeared...

IFILL: Yeah, I forgot about that one.

Mr. DUFFY: ...and appeared.

Mr. MURRAY: Novelistic characters, too.

Mr. DUFFY: Yeah, it really did. And--and--and don't forget, this was primarily about Arkansas, it wasn't about Washington; and it was primarily about Mrs. Clinton's business dealings. And when you move into the whole realm of Mrs. Clinton, you get a much more resistant level of cooperation as--as they have all through this White House. And so--so--but there are a--there are a lot of reasons that made it go on. It turns out the Clintons had a lot of enemies around the country. We had some indiscreet prosecutors who should have known when to stop, and the whole thing really...

Mr. MURRAY: We in the press helped feed it a little bit.

Mr. DUFFY: Absolutely, we did; that's right.

Mr. DAVID SANGER (The New York Times): Michael, remind us of the scorecard here. In the end, did anybody go to jail? Were there crimes committed here even if they weren't the Clintons' crimes?

Mr. DUFFY: Yes. People went to jail, but none of them were named Clinton. About 12 or 13, maybe 14 people were convicted in Arkansas. They convicted the former governor of Arkansas, Jim Guy Tucker, although his appeal is on--i--he's still under appeal. So a lot of the other people who did business with the man, James McDougal, who had owned that savings and loan that went down the tubes, did go to jail.

IFILL: Elizabeth?

Ms. ELIZABETH ARNOLD (National Public Radio): Michael, you know, when people think about this as sort of `a pox on both your houses,' because when they think about impeachment, the Republicans didn't come across looking so great, either--my question is, is it really over, and does it--does it usher in an era of restraint, or does it usher in an era of investigation?

Mr. DUFFY: Such as the--you asked that--you al--you tried to act innocent when you asked that question. It was good.

Ms. ARNOLD: But--no, but I'm not undercover.

Mr. DUFFY: That was good. That was very good. Jesse Jackson told me a long time ago, `It ain't over till it's over, and even then, it ain't over.'

IFILL: `It ain't over.'

Mr. DUFFY: And--and--and one of the things that Robert Ray did not say in his report this week is that he plans to readdress the question of President Clinton's own perjury and obstruction charges after he leaves office. Most lawyers think he won't touch it. But just by leaving the door open, he has a lot of people wondering, could he go back and do this again? He can, under the law. The new era of tranquility and cooperation? Sorry, I don't expect it.

IFILL: OK, just give me a percentagewise here; in the end, eight years later, how much of this was cover-up and how much of this was original sin?

Mr. DUFFY: Well, in--in fact, if you look at Ray's statement this week, he really was only investigating two things regarding the actual land deal, and everything else of the seven charges had to do with alleged obstruction.

IFILL: Well, a lesson that future presidents, we hope, will learn.

GWEN IFILL, host: Thanks, everybody. We'll leave it there for tonight. And before we go, a weekend viewing tip. Sunday night at 9 PM, turn to your local PBS station for "Debating Our Destiny." Jim Lehrer, who will serve as moderator of all three of this year's presidential debates, looks back on 40 years of candidate encounters. The program features exclusive, never-before-seen interviews with Presidents Reagan, Ford, Carter, Bush and Clinton, as well as Vice Presidents Quayle and Mondale. Watch it; there will be a quiz.

See you again here next week on WASHINGTON WEEK. Good night.