July 27, 2001

Announcer: From our nation's capital, this is WASHINGTON WEEK. And now here's moderator Gwen Ifill.

GWEN IFILL, host: President Bush cuts a deal with Putin, gets a scolding from the pope, attempts to rescue a patients' rights bill and tries to put his stamp on Social Security. A busy week for the 43rd president. In Europe he stands up to US allies over global warming, plays nice with Vladimir Putin and visits the troops in Kosovo. What does all this tell us about President Bush?

And as he visits the pope at the pontiff's summer house, the Bush White House feverishly courts conservative Catholics back home.

On Capitol Hill, the Patients' Bill of Rights is up, then down, then up again. Will behind-the-scenes negotiations and hands-on White House help save the popular bill?

And Social Security. Is the system broken, or is it just bent? Will it run out of money? And if so, when? And can the government fix it in time?

Who's been covering these stories this week? David Sanger of The New York Times, Mara Liasson of National Public Radio, Juliet Eilperin of The Washington Post and Gloria Borger of US News and CBS News.

Announcer: Here again is moderator Gwen Ifill.

IFILL: Good evening.

Analysis: President Bush's trip abroad seen as a mixed picture

GWEN IFILL, host: When a US president travels abroad, it's always interesting to measure his stature on the world stage. George W. Bush had plenty to prove--to US allies who disagree with him on global warming, to a Russian leader he says he trusts, and to supporters and critics at home who see the president as either strong or isolationist. David Sanger, you were there traveling with the president. How did he do?

Mr. DAVID SANGER (The New York Times): Well, Gwen, it was a very mixed picture. We saw several images of George Bush, just as we do here at home. We saw a very defiant Bush; we saw, at moments, a very creative Bush. And at the end, in Kosovo, we saw a rather malleable Bush. We saw the defiant Bush at the beginning. He looked out at these globalization--anti-globalization protests that were going on in Genoa, which were quite remarkable and quite tragic--one protester was shot to death by the Italian police. police--and he basically denounced the entire group as anti-free trade and said he wasn't going to listen to them and have his opinions changed by them.

He was equally defiant with the leaders when the subject turned to global warming. Here they had come to him and said, `Look, we need to find some middle ground.' He wasn't interested in discussing it. They came up with some fairly anodyne wording for their communique and then picked up the telephone and told their negotiators in Bonn, where a meeting was going on to work out the exact wording on the Kyoto protocol on global warming, and basically said, `Give it to him good.' And what do you know? The United States lost 178-to-0. That is, 178 countries agreed to the wording, and the United States was the only hold-out.

He was a bit creative in dealing with with Putin on the subject of missile defense. And by the time they left, Putin sounded--although we're not quite sure--like he may be willing to negotiate an end of the ABM treaty if it is linked to mutual reductions in nuclear arms by Russia and America.

IFILL: David, let me stop you there because I'm really curious about what happened after that meeting. Because Putin and Bush said one thing, and then Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, talked much more tough afterward, as did the president, as did Putin. What really happened?

Mr. SANGER: Well, after each meeting with Mr. Putin--and this was the--the second--we've had this strange effect where one character or another in the meeting has sort of reinterpreted what went on. So it started off very friendly, and then Bush came out the next day and he said to us, `Look, Mr. Putin has got to understand, I'm going ahead with this program anyway and he'd better get on board.' Well, that's probably not a great way to start a negotiation. And that, of course, has--has caused a sort of counterreaction in Russia. I think that you will see this move up and down for a while as Mr. Bush moves, often as he does with negotiating with Congress, between sounding like the conciliatory president and sounding like the tough guy.

Ms. MARA LIASSON (National Public Radio): David, I'm wondering what you think George W. Bush's approach to the whole controversy over globalization is. President Clinton, when he would travel around the world and encounter some of these arguments--not necessarily violent protests--would really try to embrace them and try to--he--he would say we want to make change our friend. He saw globalization as something that was a good force. How does--how does George W. Bush deal with this whole issue?

Mr. SANGER: You know, this is the issue on which you can really see the difference between the two men and their different interests. As you say, when President Clinton would go around the world, he would wax on for hours about the good and bad effects of globalization. He'd say on the one hand it created more perfect markets, it opened up opportunities for people; on the other hand, it cost people jobs. A job gained in the United States might be one lost in Mexico or Italy. George Bush doesn't want to deal with that, and what was most remarkable was intellectually he just would not get into the argument. The day after the Genoa summit, he showed up in Rome and he went to the Roman Forum and stood on the spot where Julius Caesar used to speak. And when he was asked about this, he said--and I wrote it down--`I know what I believe, and I believe what I believe is right.' And that was his total comment on it.

Ms. GLORIA BORGER (US News & World Report): What does the president get by defying 178 countries on the issue of global warming? Does it get him anything domestically?

Mr. SANGER: It gets a lot of his allies very angry. It splits the domestic vote, I think, between those people who believe that, in fact, the president is right and if he signed this agreement it would hurt us economically, and the environmentalists and other groups believe that this is a symbol of--of how the Bush administration is a captive of American industry and the energy industry and the auto industry in particular.

Ms. JULIET EILPERIN (The Washington Post): And, David, to what extent do you really think Putin saved the trip for Bush? How important was their dialogue and their accord?

Mr. SANGER: That's a very good point, because if it had not been for Putin, I think that this would have been a very rough trip. Just think about it: the only thing people will remember about these G7 summits were the riots. And, of course, the G7 summits in the past, you died of boredom. Here, all of a sudden, we saw rock-throwing.

The meeting with the pope was so-so. And the--the Putin meeting was the only bright spot where you got a sense that he was beginning to win some--some converts. Tony Blair and the Italian prime minister...

Ms. EILPERIN: Mm-hmm.

Mr. SANGER: ...both came out and said, `The president's got some good points to make here and we ought to listen to his defense proposals.'

IFILL: David, hang in there with us because we want to talk some more about the pope's visit.

Analysis: President Bush visits with Pope John Paul II; White House launches aggressive campaign to win affections of Catholic voters

GWEN IFILL, host: The president's last stop in Europe was a visit with Pope John Paul II. It's a visit every president makes, but it was also a calculated risk for a president who does not necessarily agree with everything the pope has to say, especially when this White House has launched concerted and aggressive campaign to win the attentions and the affections of Catholic voters. Tell us about that, Mara.

Ms. MARA LIASSON (National Public Radio): Well, that's true, Gwen. This White House has targeted Catholic voters. They want the president to win a real majority, not just a Supreme Court majority next time, and they believe that the key to that is not just any Catholic voters, but conservative, churchgoing Catholic voters. Al Gore actually won the Catholic vote last time because he has a lot of strength among Hispanics. But among Catholics who attend Mass at least once a week, George W. Bush won; he got 57-to-43 percent of the vote, and they think they can do even better than that next time. And it just so happens that these voters are clustered in Midwestern states like Illinois, Pennsylvania, Michigan, all states Bush didn't win last time, needs to win next time; and he is going about targeting these voters very methodically, very aggressively.

The RNC has rejuvenated its Catholic Task Force. Every Thursday at 11 AM, there's a conference call of conservative Catholic leaders. A White House representative is on that call. He has woven Catholic language and--and Catholic social teaching into his speeches. And everywhere the president goes, he meets with Catholic bishops and priests, he visited--visits Catholic charities. Never misses an opportunity.

IFILL: David Sanger, you were traveling with the president when he had that meeting with the pope. That--this is where it gets complicated, isn't it?

Mr. DAVID SANGER (The New York Times): It is. There was this fascinating moment where the pope released a statement at the beginning on stem cell research, knowing that the president was going to have to be making a decision soon on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, and he basically left him very little room, and said, `I see no way in which this can be--this can fit within the Catholic Church's beliefs.'

What struck us as particularly interesting, though, was that the president, in a press conference shortly after he met the pope, said that this was an issue he was taking an unusual amount of time with, much more time than his administration usually does, even with complex issues. I'm not quite sure what he meant by that, Mara.

Ms. LIASSON: Well, he has been taking an awful lot of time, a lot more time than some people think he should have taken. In other words, he's created an issue where he was being lobbied heavily by both sides, there's magazine covers and this is th--the fight for President Bush's soul. And he did open himself up to some pretty heavy lobbying by the pope. Now the pope in his statement talked about the evils of creating embryos for research purposes and then destroying them. Now some people in the administration who want the president to find some kind of a compromise on this jumped on that language and said, `Aha, he's opening the door to some kind of stem cell research because he didn't talk about the embryos left over in fertility clinics.' However, the pope issued a clarification...

Ms. GLORIA BORGER (US News & World Report): Well...

Ms. LIASSON: ...that said, `Forget it, an embryo is a human life. Any research that indirectly or directly destroys them is wrong.'

Ms. BORGER: Well, isn't it an indication of how difficult an issue this is for the White House, that they were trying to spin the pope?

Ms. LIASSON: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Ms. BORGER: And--and it--it's--it's kind of difficult--it's kind of difficult for them to do that. But, Mara, can't they come out in the end and actually look like "winners," if there is such a thing in this issue, by saying, `OK, we're going to do a very circumscribed solution here with real limits on it. And by the way, we want to criminalize cloning'...

Ms. LIASSON: Right.

Ms. BORGER: ...for example, `or outlaw the creation of embryos for research'?

Ms. LIASSON: Well, there are some people in the administration who think they can; and certainly, Senator Bill Frist, who's the only doctor in the Senate, who has a plan just like this, is one of the president's health policy advisers, he thinks so. However, when you talk to conservative Catholic leaders, they say on this issue there is no middle ground, there is no compromise. If he wants to keep his faith, keep his pledge to conservative Catholic voters and pro-life voters--he has written them only just in May that he is against federal funding that involves destroying embryos--it's going to be very tough for him. And they have raised the political stakes and they say the kind of compromise that many people think would be OK is not gonna be OK for him politically.

Ms. JULIET EILPERIN (The Washington Post): And, Mara, no matter what he does, some people are going to be angry.

Ms. LIASSON: Yes, that's right.

Ms. EILPERIN: And Congress likes to make its mark. And don--don't you see that this is going to come up one way or the other in legislation?

Ms. LIASSON: Absolutely; and some people think that might be the best thing for the president. He can agonize as long as he wants, but as soon as he makes a decision there will be legislation in Congress. Senator Frist has this compromise plan that he says a ma--a majority of votes for.

Unidentified Panelist: That's right.

Ms. LIASSON: Senator Specter goes even further. He wants unlimited embryonic stem cell research and he says he has 75 votes. I find that a little bit hard to believe. There are moderates in the House of Representatives who want stem cell research. There are con--the conservative leadership of the House is against it. This is going to go to comp--Congress.

IFILL: But let me ask you a broader, more simplistic question, I guess, about this idea of the Catholic vote. What is a Catholic vote? Why is that different than a black vote or a Latino vote? Is there such a thing?

Ms. LIASSON: I don't think there is such a thing as a "Catholic vote," but there is such a thing as a conservative Catholic vote. In other words, people who go to church regularly, who do get their ethical teachings from the holy father, or from the priests, they care about this issue. The majority of Catholics, when they're polled, they're for stem cell research. But they don't vote on this issue. But what's happening is that...

IFILL: Or on abortion?

Ms. LIASSON: Or on abortion. There are--the priests and the--the hierarchy of the Catholic Church is getting more involved in politics, just like Protestant evangelical churches. They're more involved; they're putting out voter guides. This matters to them.

Analysis: Battle over Patients' Bill of Rights

GWEN IFILL, host: Well, there seem to be big battles on every front for this White House. But whoever thought the president would be expending so much time and political capital winning over Republicans? This week's prime example: the Patients' Bill of Rights. As the president tried to whip his House troops in line, he observed how tough a job that can be.

(Excerpt from video)

President GEORGE W. BUSH: (From July 26, 2001) Dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there's no question about it. But--but dealing with Congress is--is a--a matter of give and take. The president doesn't get everything he wants, the Congress doesn't get everything they want, but we're finding good common ground.

(End of excerpt)

IFILL: OK, so, Juliet, the president is talking about giving and taking and common ground. Who's giving and who's taking?

Ms. JULIET EILPERIN (The Washington Post): Well, the president's giving a little, but not enough, from the perspective of most lawmakers. What's going on is the House is considering two rival bills to reform the managed-care system. One of them, a bipartisan bill, would give patients broad opportunities to sue their HMOs over medical decisions. And the GOP has its own bill, which the president supports, which is--would only allow patients to sue in very rare circumstances. So essentially, Bush devoted much of this week, once he got back from Europe, to trying to get moderate and conservative Republicans in line behind this proposal. And we're finding kind of a new gridlock in Washington, which is that members of the president's own party aren't giving him exactly what he wants.

IFILL: Yeah, when the president finally got to Capitol Hill to do some lobbying, which we had not seen him do a lot of, he wasn't going to Tom Daschle's office, he wasn't going to Dick Gephardt's office like he was that first week or so...

Ms. EILPERIN: Mm-hmm.

IFILL: ...you remember when all the Democrats came to the White House. It was all about getting Republicans.

Ms. EILPERIN: Absolutely. He brought them into the speaker of the House's suite and said, `Look, I need your vote.' He was looking people in the eye--Republicans--and they were saying no to him.

Ms. GLORIA BORGER (US News & World Report): Well, how does George W. Bush lobby? It is a carrot approach? Is it a stick approach? What's it like when he does this?

Ms. EILPERIN: You know, I talked to a number of members who have been in the room with him, and essentially, it's--it's actually a fairly policy-based approach. He kept outlining what he thought about the Fletcher--the Fletcher bill, which is a Republican bill sponsored by a Kentucky Republican. And he would say, `Look, I think this is better. I'm worried that people are going to end--end up injured.' But what's interesting is he keeps bringing the same members back and back again to the White House--or in this case when he went up to visit them--and he's saying the same thing. So he's not changing his pitch, he's not appealing to people on a personal basis. It's really this kind of broad-brush approach to lobbying.

Ms. MARA LIASSON (National Public Radio): The president came into town saying he was going be a uniter, not a divider, he was going to change the tone. This is a pretty divisive issue and it's divided his own party. How--how well do you think he's done on those promises?

Ms. EILPERIN: Well, he certainly hasn't fulfilled some of the promises that he talked about. I mean, the fact of the matter is, look at who he's talking to. He's only talking to Republicans. I talked to one of the most conservative Repub--Democrats in the House, Ken Lucas from Kentucky, who might support the president on this. Every day I ask him whether the White House has called, and he says no. So it's really interesting...

Ms. LIASSON: They'll call tomorrow.

Ms. EILPERIN: Exactly. Now they'll call. But, you know, the fact of the matter is that Bush is only talking to people within his own party and, really, is leaving Democrats, some of whom might be inclined to support him, aside.

IFILL: David.

Mr. DAVID SANGER (The New York Times): Ju--Juliet, I was wondering whether his experience in Texas, where he went to a fairly similar debate, has affected his strategy here in any particular way.

Ms. EILPERIN: You know, it's--it's unclear. He doesn't--he doesn't seem--he certainly seems to know the issue, and that is helping him with members; he talks about the Texas experience. But it hasn't really affected how he approaches it, because, again, he's not looking at a bipartisan approach. He really is just trying to get his own party behind him.

IFILL: Explain for us for one minute, because it's easy to get caught up in the politics of the whys and whys--why nots. But what is the difference between what Bush wants in the Patients' Bill of Rights--what the president wants; I shouldn't call him Bush, I'll get mail--what the president wants in a Patients' Bill of Rights and what the Democrats want or what Charlie Norwood wants in a Patients' Bill of Rights?

Ms. EILPERIN: I mean, there are many elements that are the same. Both bills would expand access to emergency rooms, to OB/GYNs, things like that. They--they have all that in common. But there's really the 10 percent that everyone talks about, and that really has to do with legal liability. How much should HMOs be held accountable for the decisions they make on what kind of access there's--to care. And there's very big differences between the bills on that front. The kind of process you have to go through as a patient under the Republican bill is much lengthier and, in certain cases, will cut off your options to go to court; whereas with the Democratic an--bill, which also has a lot of Republican support, you you have a lot more opportunities to sue.

Ms. BORGER: Don't the Republicans say that the Democrats just care more about the trial lawyers and all of this and that's what it's really all about?

Ms. EILPERIN: Absolutely, that comes up. They say that, `Look, if it wasn't for the trial lawyers--we've been working on this for four or five years--we'd have an agreement.' But the fact of the matter is, there are just true philosophical differences between these members. And again, what's interesting about the members who are opposing Bush, for example, is some of them are moderates, some of them are conservatives. You have Bob Barr for Georgia, you know, and then you have Marge Roukema, a liberal Republican from New Jersey. So it's really more complicated than simply a political fight.

IFILL: So at one point this week it looks like that this bill was never going to come out, at least not until September. Now it looks like they might vote on it next week?

Ms. EILPERIN: Exactly. Staff will be working over the weekend. There is paper going back and forth between the White House and Capitol Hill, and there's a chance that it could come up before the end of next week. After that, they have to put it off till September.

IFILL: OK, thank you.

Analysis: Future of Social Security

GWEN IFILL, host: Well, on to the future of Social Security, an issue that never seems to go away or even go anywhere. This week's debate centered on a draft of an interim report from a bipartisan commission. It didn't even make any recommendations. But it touched off a rhetorical storm anyway. Gloria, why all the fuss this time?

Ms. GLORIA BORGER (US News & World Report): Well, I was thinking about it, Gwen. I--I think you'd have to say it was kind of a draft with an attitude...

IFILL: Mm-hmm.

Ms. BORGER: ...towards it. And what's really scary about this whole issue is that it wasn't a draft about how to solve the problem of Social Security, it was a draft report about how to state the problem of Social Security...

IFILL: Yeah. Yeah.

Ms. BORGER: ...which really gives you a sense about what a hot-button issue this is. Just step back for a moment. We have a 16-member commission, bipartisan, all appointed by George W. Bush. One thing they have in common, though, is that they've all stated at one time or another that they really support this sort of partial privatization of Social Security, these kind of individual retirement accounts, which they say would create more wealth for you as a retiree. So when this statement came out, if you will, a lot of people were on the prowl. They were looking for--for indications of what this commission was going to do. The commission report, in stating the problem, said that Social Security was broken, that it was not sustainable. And lots of members of Congress, particularly Democrats, jumped on that and they said, `You are being alarmist, you're being excessively gloomy here because you want to use this as a way to get exactly what you want.'

The one point they made was, OK, they said in this statement that Social Security's probably going to go broke by the year 2016. A lot of people think it's going to come in the year 2038. So they were saying, `OK, these are a bunch of Chicken Littles,' and there's going to be a big fight...

IFILL: This is an accounting difference we're talking about, the difference between 2016 and 2038?

Ms. BORGER: It--it is, but people say that's an awfully big difference...

IFILL: Yeah.

Ms. BORGER: ...and, you know, that maybe we don't have to do these drastic things so quickly. We don't want to cut benefits of retirees, for example.

Ms. MARA LIASSON (National Public Radio): One of the things that the supporters of privatization are using as an argument to sell this plan...

Ms. BORGER: Right.

Ms. LIASSON: ...is by saying to women and minorities, `You don't get such a good deal under the current system. You'd do better if your Social Security money was invested in the stock market.' Now, of course, Democrats say that's not true. Which is it?

Ms. BORGER: Well, it--it's kind of interesting. First of all, it's really a political statement here. Who are the two constituencies that are...

Ms. LIASSON: Right.

Ms. BORGER: ...mostly Democratic...

Ms. LIASSON: Sure.

Ms. BORGER: ...women and minorities? Who are two constituencies that depend an awful lot on their Social Security benefits? Women and minorities. And they made the case in this statement that minorities don't get a fair break under the current Social Security system because their life expectancy is shorter so they don't get enough benefits. They also say that women often depend on their husbands' benefits and that lots of women these days don't get married or if they get married they don't stay married long enough. And a lot of people said, well, you know, that's just not true because women and minorities also depend on disability benefits and survivor benefits a lot, and that perhaps those benefits would get reduced if you had this partial privatization of Social Security. So there's--there's two sides to that argument.

IFILL: David? I hear you trying to get in there.

Mr. DAVID SANGER (The New York Times): Well, yeah. Gloria, one of the fascinating features of this privatization debate is that it gained steam during the time that the stock market was taking off and it was obvious to everybody the returns would be higher. We're now nearly a year into the stock market decline, and I'm wondering whether that has changed the politics of it, whether or not people have become a little more cautious and thought twice about putting even a piece of their Social Security money into the market.

Ms. BORGER: Well, I think politically you can say that it's--it's easily emboldened the Democrats because the Democrats are saying, `OK, you want to take 2 percent of your payroll tax, you want to invest it in the stock market. That might have been fine a few years ago, but what if you make some really lousy investments, which is perfectly plausible these days? It's going to hurt you and your retirement benefit will not be there.' That's why the Democrats say, `Instead of carving it out of your payroll checks, what we want to do,' they say, `is add it on so there's not as much of a risk.' So you could have an additional Social Security benefit, sort of like another 401(k) plan. And that's--you know, they're using this economy, really, to their advantage, David.

Ms. JULIET EILPERIN (The Washington Post): Now the Democrats are complaining loudly about, obviously, this approach, and I know Bob Matsui from California, a House member, even suggested throwing the commission out. But in reality, how can they affect the debate? What are they going to do?

IFILL: Quick answer, sorry.

Ms. BORGER: How are they going to affect the debate? Well, they're going to be against this commission and they're going to say `We ought to start from scratch' because they don't want this kind of partial privatization. Look for it in the mid-term election.

IFILL: OK.

GWEN IFILL, host: Well, we're going to leave you tonight with a snippet of tape we just couldn't resist. It's your secretary of State showcasing America at its atonal best during this week's meeting of Southeast Asian foreign misi--ministers in Hanoi. In case you can't recognize the tune, it's called "El Paso."

(Excerpt from video)

Secretary COLIN POWELL (State Department): Since George Bush became president, we're all American cowboys these days. (Singing) `My love is strong and it pushes me onward. Down off the hill to Felina I go. Out in the west Texas town of El Paso I fell in love with a Vietnamese girl. My challenge was answered in less than a heartbeat, the handsome young stranger lay dead on the floor. Out through the back door of Rosa's I ran, out where the horses were tied. Kissing my cheek as she kneels by my side.'

(End of excerpt)

IFILL: Well, Powell wasn't the only high-ranking official making a fool of himself in Han--Hanoi. That woman at the end was Japanese Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka. But don't be too hard on the secretary of State. You've never heard my version of "El Paso."

And before I'm tempted to share, I think I'll just say thanks to everybody around the table and to David Sanger, who let us drag him off summer vacation. And we'll see you all next week on WASHINGTON WEEK. Good night.