Friday, February 1, 2008

MS. IFILL: Only four days until the Super Tuesday primaries. A race that began with more than a dozen candidates is down to just a handful, and some of each party's biggest names - Ted Kennedy, Arnold Schwarzenegger - have made their choices. Who knew things could get so exciting. I'm here in Los Angeles with 1,000 of my closest friends, tonight on "Washington Week."

The Democrats are all sweetness and light.

SEN. HILLARY CLINTON (D-NY): And you know, it did take a Clinton to clean after the first Bush and I think it might take another one to clean up after the second Bush.

SEN. BARACK OBAMA (D-IL): I don't think the choice is between black and white or it's about gender or religion. I don't think it's about young or old. I think what is at stake right now is whether we are looking backwards or we are looking forward.

MS. IFILL: The Republicans, not so sweet, not so light.

GOV. MITT ROMNEY (R-MA): What does that mean? What does that mean, we don't want them -

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R-AZ): It means a timetable for until we leave.

GOV. ROMNEY: Listen, senator, let's -

ANDERSON COOPER: Let me jump in, because the quote that I have -

GOV. ROMNEY: Is it not fair, is it not fair to have the person who's being accused of having a position he doesn't have be the expert on what his position is?

MS. IFILL: The field just keeps on shrinking -

SEN. JOHN EDWARDS (D-NC): It's time for me to step aside so that history can blaze its path.

SEN. EDWARD KENNEDY (D-MA): It is time now for Barack Obama.

MS. IFILL: - while the big endorsements keep rolling in. The race for president transformed as voters in 22 states head for the polls this Tuesday. Who will be left standing?

We assess the state of this unexpected and unpredictable campaign year with Peter Baker of the Washington Post, John Harwood of CNBC and the New York Times, Doyle McManus of the Los Angeles Times, and Karen Tumulty of Time Magazine.

ANNOUNCER: Celebrating 40 years of journalistic excellence, from Glendale, California, this is "Washington Week" with Gwen Ifill produced in association with National Journal.

ANNOUNCER: Once again, from the historic Alex Theater, moderator Gwen Ifill.

MS. IFILL: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It's great to be in LA. Good evening. We always figured that California would be a good place for our pre-Super Tuesday program, but little did we know how good a place. Since last we met, the presidential campaign has taken yet another series of operatic turns: the Democratic field is a shrunken version of itself - only Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama left standing.

SEN. OBAMA: Because I will offer a clear contrast as somebody who never supported this war, thought it was a bad idea. I don't want to just end the war, but I want to end the mindset that got us in war in the first place. That's the kind of leadership I intend to provide as president of the United States.

SEN. CLINTON: And - and of course, you know -

WOLF BLITZER: Senator Clinton, that's a clear swipe at you.

SEN. CLINTON: Really?

MS. IFILL: Well, let's talk about that debate last night. Doyle, you were one of the questioners there, and to all of us watching it, we weren't hanging out with Leo DiCaprio and the stars - (laughter) - but those of us who were watching it at home, the serious viewers, thought it was an awfully warm love fest.

MR. MCMANUS: Well, the music, the tone of it was very warm and it was deliberately so. Actually, if you think back over the course of this Democratic campaign, the debate in New Hampshire was nasty, the next debate in Las Vegas was nice, they went to the edge, stepped over, and pulled back. The debate in South Carolina was a little nasty, this debate was much nicer, and that's because Democrats like both of these candidates. When you go out and ask in polls would you like these two people to be on the ticket together, most Clinton voters would like Obama to be on the ticket, most Obama voters would like Hillary Clinton to be on the ticket. So those candidates can't get too nasty without alienating some of the people they're counting on to vote for them.

MS. IFILL: Does John Edwards' absence from the race complicate that as well?

MR. MCMANUS: It complicates it. It's an X-factor and I don't think - I don't think I'm ready to guess where those voters are going to go.

MS. IFILL: Karen, I wonder, as you watched these candidates try to find their way to a place - these two candidates, especially where they seem very aware of the fact that they were sitting next to each other, an African-American and a woman on stage, what did they have to negotiate?

MS. TUMULTY: Well, I think that another thing that was in play last night in the debate was the fact that they were also both being very, very cautious because they understand now that the stage has expanded dramatically and there's just absolutely no room for mistakes right now, but I think that going into these next few crucial weeks, you really get a sense of what they're trying to say and the territory they're trying to stake out by looking at their advertising. Barack Obama is running a lot of ads. They're about him as a person. Hillary Clinton's are much more issue oriented, and I think that these are the two strategies that these two candidates are taking, they hope, to the nomination.

MS. IFILL: John, what are Hillary Clinton's advantages, disadvantages at this stage of the race?

MR. HARWOOD: Well, I think part of it stems from what Karen just explained. Barack Obama has the superior persona, so he features himself in his television ads. Hillary Clinton has got the identification with her husband's economic record in the 1990s at a time when Americans are increasingly concerned about what's happening in the economy right now. That's her calling card, the nuts and bolts, what she can deliver, the track record she has of working on those issues and that's what she's going to try to press, especially with those John Edwards voters. The pivot for John Edwards voters - are they change voters who are going to go with Barack Obama because John Edwards isn't in the race, or are they blue collar voters who want something done about their economic situation, white voters who are vote siding with John Edwards - may not be so keen to side with Barack Obama. That's one of the question in the race it's where those people go.

MS. IFILL: Peter, one of the biggest applause lines last night was attacking the president, President Bush. Is that a huge advantage or disadvantage for Barack Obama? Does it set up the contrast for experience or is it always just good for Democrats?

MR. BAKER: Look, first of all, you have to remember the audience. Of course, the biggest applause line in Los Angeles, Hollywood Auditorium is going to be a big hit. But Barack Obama has tried to pivot himself as post-partisan, as somebody who wants to bring Republicans and Democrats together, and so there's a real balance that he has to achieve here. He took shots at Mitt Romney and at John McCain last night, gentle shots, but you began to see how he might start moving into a general election should he win the nomination, but he also can't be too harsh because I think that then gets rid of that sheen that he has built up over these last few months of being somebody who is above old style Washington politics.

MS. IFILL: Barack Obama's campaign said yesterday they've raised $32 million in a month, and not even a complete month? That seems to me that puts them - I don't know what the polls are saying today, but pretty much on par, very competitive still.

MR. MCMANUS: That's right. That was a record, as I understand it, for a month. And it's notable that the Clinton campaign has not come back yet with its number. If their number was bigger, they might have come back on the very same day. It's entirely possible in the few days remaining before that Super Tuesday primary to blow through a whole lot of money. It may be hard to spend all $32 million, but time is running very short. I think if you look at the overall dynamic of the Democratic race, Hillary Clinton started out with big built-in advantages: the most familiar name, the -

MS. IFILL: Which is why Barack Obama is still introducing himself to voters in the state.

MR. MCMANUS: Exactly, exactly. The strongest alliances among traditional parts of the Democratic coalition. Barack Obama has been rising steadily and got a big boost in December through January, and of course the Iowa Caucus was very important there. The question is - and we're not able to see it in the polls. This is very much like New Hampshire where things are happening in these final days that we're not going to able to see. Will Barack Obama make up that last 10 percent? Is that happening right now?

MR. HARWOOD: And their concerned, Gwen, with that $32 million, not just about Super Tuesday but about the long game, about the slow motion Super Tuesday that takes place between February 9th and the 19th. They think time is their friend here for the reason that Doyle was just explaining - that they're catching up with Hillary Clinton and what they need is stretch out this race, have more time to pass her, and meantime keep at parity with her in delegates, because they think that they - because of the way proportional allocation of delegates on the Democratic side - that even if they lose a majority of states on February 5th, which isn't certain, they can still be extremely close to her in the delegate count.

MS. IFILL: It seems, Karen, that one of the difficulties, for both of these candidates is trying to explain how they're different, when in fact they're so much alike.

MS. TUMULTY: Yes, and that's why I think you do see them going to thematics, because I can't imagine that too many people's votes are going to be determined next Tuesday on whether there is an individual mandate somewhere in your healthcare plan or not. So I think that's why we see them going to thematics and an ability to bring - and who is best capable of bringing about change.

MS. IFILL: Let's talk about thematics: Camelot. We - I would sing it, but it would be wrong. We saw Ted Kennedy and Caroline Kennedy, not to be underestimated, come out. You talked to Ted Kennedy and Barack Obama after that announcement this week in New York. What did you pick up?

MS. TUMULTY: Well, it was really interesting. Everyone had thought that Ted Kennedy would endorse at some point, but the fact that he did it before there was a fairly clear nominee was extraordinary, and I think that there were two things. There was, one, his sense that there is something historic about Barack Obama's candidacy. You certainly all the imagery going back to Camelot and his brother's campaign in the speech, but it was - and you could not mistake. It was also a repudiation of Clinton and Clintonism and that style of politics. Caroline Kennedy had all of those things, but one of the things I found most extraordinary in talking to her was the story of what brought her to decide to do this after decades of deciding not to get involved in electoral politics.

MS. IFILL: Her children.

MS. TUMULTY: Her children. She said that they started dragging her to campaign events a year and a half ago, and that it was her children who worked on her so hard to get her to do this and to tell her this was the time to do it. And this is a year, by the way, when young voters may finally be showing this potential that we've been talking about -

MS. IFILL: For decades.

MS. TUMULTY: - for so many elections.

MR. BAKER: Well, you've seen actually among a lot of the Democratic elite, the senators and governors who've been endorsing Obama the last few days have also attributed to their kids I think. Claire McCaskill had done that - said, my kids made me. So I think what you're seeing here is the elite, the establishment sort of being brought around to the idea that there is a new generation to think about here, and it's a really extraordinary thing because you often have a dynamic of inside/outside candidate in this type of race, but the outside candidate so rarely is embraced by the inside the way he seems to be in these last few days. Does that change the nature of his campaign? Does that make him something he's fought against or does that simply give him the imprimatur he needs to take it the final stretch?

MS. IFILL: Now, let's talk about the Republicans for a minute because they have such an amazing race as well. Although Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee are still in the race, it has also essentially become a two-man race, featuring Mitt Romney and John McCain. Both who were on display this week on a presidential debate here in Los Angeles.

SEN. MCCAIN: Timetables was the buzzword for withdrawal.

GOV. ROMNEY: Why don't you use the whole quote, Senator?

SEN. MCCAIN: I'm using your whole quote, where you said -

GOV. ROMNEY: Why do you insist on not using the actual quote? That's not what I said.

SEN. MCCAIN: The actual quote is, we don't want them to lay in the weeds until we leave. That is the actual quote, and I'm sure fact-checkers -

GOV. ROMNEY: What does that mean? What does that mean, we don't want them -

SEN. MCCAIN: It means a timetable for until we leave.

GOV. ROMNEY: Listen, Senator, let's -

MR. COOPER: Let me jump in because the quote that I have -

GOV. ROMNEY: Is it not fair - is it not fair to have the person who's being accused of having a position he doesn't have be the expert on what his position is? How is it that you're the expert on my position, when my position has been very clear?

REP. RON PAUL (R-TX): The country is in bankruptcy, and when I listen to this argument I find it rather silly because they're arguing technicalities of a policy they both agree with. They agreed with going in, they agreed for staying, agreed for staying how many years, and these are technicalities. We should be debating foreign policy: whether we should have interventionism or non-interventionism, whether we should be defending this country or whether we should be the policemen of the world.

MS. IFILL: I'm thinking, John, there was no hug after that exchange. (Laughter.) Why so hostile on the Republican side?

MR. HARWOOD: Well, first of all, the other candidates, generally speaking, don't like Mitt Romney very well.

MS. IFILL: Personally.

MR. HARWOOD: Personally. They don't like the fact that he's been able to take out his checkbook and write his way into this race. They don't like the way that he's flip-flopped on issues and they think he's a little too pretty as well. But I think really what you have there is a display of why John McCain is in a strong position. You really have one and a half candidates on the Republican side because Mitt Romney is behind the eight ball right now when you look at the map. John McCain is strong on the coasts. Mike Huckabee is still in the race to kind of block Mitt Romney from breaking through in some of those Southern states, and John McCain's beginning to consolidate the Republican establishment. This is a development that flows out of the weakness of the Republican field, the John McCain who was flat on his back in mid-2007 with no money -

MS. IFILL: It's an amazing comeback. Yes.

MR. HARWOOD: - the staff was leaving, is now ahead. And the irony is that the Democrats, who have a very strong field, may have a longer race that gives the Republicans time to get a second wind. Maybe John McCain could replenish some of the Republican coffers and get ready to compete in the fall.

MS. IFILL: You're nodding?

MR. MCMANUS: I'm nodding. That's absolutely right. The irony of this Republican race is that our conservative party is not putting forward what it would have considered a mainstream conservative a year ago. The original conservative candidates, Fred Thompson long ago - well, there were several who never got in - dropped out, never made it, and they are left with two candidates that the conservative base of the Republican Party has never fully trusted: John McCain and Mitt Romney. And so a lot of the bitterness of those exchanges you were seeing was each one was saying, I'm the real conservative and you're not, and to make that case required pointing out all of the things on which - in McCain's case, he was arguing that Romney hadn't been hawkish enough on Iraq and had raised fees in Massachusetts. In Romney's case, of course, he brought up McCain-Feingold, McCain-Kennedy, all of these terrible bipartisan associations with the Democrats that McCain has had through his career.

MS. IFILL: Which infuriates the Rush Limbaughs of the world, apparently. So we'll wait and see what happens. But Peter, one of the things we saw, maybe it's because it was at the Reagan Library, but I don't think saw, this incredible nostalgia for the Ronald Reagan years. Is it a real nostalgia or is it just positioning?

MR. BAKER: It's a little of both, obviously. Ronald Reagan was the last very successful, unquestionably successful Republican president. He is a unifying figure and force and idea within the Republican Party. Whatever the reality might have been, he brings them together. So everybody wants to clam his mantle. John McCain said over and over and over again that night, I was a foot soldier in the Reagan revolution, which is sort of an interesting comparison that he's making or allusion that he's making. Mitt Romney said, I think Reagan would have endorsed me for this reason, this reason, this reason. Nobody obviously can say - (laughs) - but in fact, it's also of course a rebuke to the current president because none of them are talking about how they want to be like George W. Bush.

MS. IFILL: Well, that's just the truth for this Republican Party right now. But Karen, Mike Huckabee is still in the race. We saw Ron Paul, who actually brings a little bit of tartness to these debates. (Laughter.) Mike Huckabee is not going anywhere, at least he doesn't sound like he is.

MS. TUMULTY: Yes, that's right, and there's an important difference to know between the Democratic process and the Republican process going out from here on out, and that is that the Republican primary process, which has a lot of states that are winner-take-all, is really designed to get this thing over with quickly so they can all get together behind whoever it is and move forward, whereas the Democratic process - thanks to some rules changes that were negotiated in the 1980s but have never been tested - are designed to really just draw this out. So Mike Huckabee says he's in for the duration, and this is bad news for Mitt Romney because to the degree he gets votes, it's likely to be social conservatives and that is likely to come out of the people who might have voted for Mitt Romney, but it just seems like his role now is just to hasten the end.

MR. HARWOOD: Gwen, where I think Mike Huckabee wants to be going is right on the ticket with John McCain and that's something that should not be ruled out. He's a very plausible choice for that. And I want to make one point on George W. Bush that Peter mentioned. He could have a role to play that's significant this spring and that is helping John McCain bring the party together if John McCain comes out of Super Tuesday in a position to lock up the nomination. Even though George W. Bush is very unpopular nationally, within the Republican Party he still gets pretty good numbers, and he's somebody who could validate John McCain for all of those parts of the Republican coalition that don't trust him right now.

MS. IFILL: You know, we talked about the incredible rise of John McCain, but the incredible fall of Rudy Giuliani cannot be - we cannot allow that to go uncommented on. He was the frontrunner in national polls for a long time. We thought this was going to be a Giuliani-Clinton race. What happened, Karen?

MS. TUMULTY: I think it is the most spectacular flameout that we have seen in a very long time. Howard Dean must be so happy. But first of all, Rudy Giuliani was running on the aura of 9/11, and it was always questionable whether someone with his particular positions on a lot of the social issues could win in a Republican primary. It was questionable, too, whether the party of family values would really turn to the only politician in America who seems to have a more complicated marital story than the Clintons. (Laughter.) And beyond that, he just never seemed to come up with a message beyond evoking 9/11. I was traveling with him at one point in Iowa and he was sort of relating everything he saw there to something he knew from New York. He walked into a country and western store in Ft. Dodge, Iowa, and starting telling the locals all about bull riding in Madison Square Garden.

MS. IFILL: It doesn't work. The Staten Island candidate kind of. So if you are Rudy Giuliani, if you're Arnold Schwarzenegger, everyone is just getting on the bandwagon, right?

MR. MCMANUS: Well, that's partly right, although John McCain was the natural candidate for Rudy Giuliani to endorse. In fact, the importance of Giuliani's withdrawal is in a thematic and programmatic way Rudy Giuliani and John McCain were the same candidate. The same Republican voters who had terrorism, Iraq and national security first on their list were choosing between those two. One of them is gone, most of those - whatever the number is - 12, 15 percent of the Republican electorate are really very likely to go to McCain, not because necessarily of Giuliani's endorsement. Endorsements don't work that way anymore, but because McCain is the closest to speaking to them.

MR. HARWOOD: And the interesting question, Gwen, is what happens to the Republican Party? The Republican Party of Arnold Schwarzenegger Rudy Giuliani and John McCain is not the George Bush Republican Party or the Ronald Reagan Republican Party for that matter. Do they intend to try to recreate that old Reagan coalition or transform it in the way Barack Obama is talking about transforming the Democratic coalition? If the two of those guys are nominated, we're going to see a different race than we've ever seen.

MS. IFILL: Is transformation the key now in this campaign, who can be the better agent of transformation, both on the Republican side and the Democratic side, Peter?

MR. BAKER: Well, certainly. Obviously, change is something that everybody is talking about, especially since Iowa when Barack Obama so successfully translated that into a victory.

MS. IFILL: I just want to say, transformation seems more profound than change.

MR. BAKER: It's a better word.

MS. IFILL: It's about completely - yes, more syllables. But it also allows -

MR. BAKER: Harder for the bumper sticker though.

MS. IFILL: Yes, but it also talks about completely changing the fundamentals of a party and a nation rather than just heading in a different direction.

MR. BAKER: Right. Well, look, and frankly any of these three candidates you're talking about - if Mitt Romney doesn't succeed in pulling this out, these three candidates we're talking about will in fact transform their parties - no question about that. And imagine a race in the fall between Senator McCain, who in fact has been an agent of transformation even if he has been in Washington for a long time - certainly bucked his party on a number of issues - and Barack Obama, who's promising a new era of Kennedyesque Camelot, as you said, or Hillary Clinton, who's talking about really redefining what Clintonism even means. It's going to be an extraordinary contest to figure out who captures that mantle, and the polls show in fact I think in the Wall Street Journal and NBC that John McCain runs pretty much even with Obama and Hillary Clinton in a way that none of the other Republican candidates do.

MR. HARWOOD: And we shouldn't forget that the emergence of John McCain with backing from people like Arnold Schwarzenegger dramatically reduces the chance that Michael Bloomberg is going to get into this race as an independent.

MS. IFILL: Right. There's this enthusiasm gap, however - not a gap so much. There's this enthusiasm factor in this race in which we've seen primary after primary after primary in which the number of people participating have doubled. How would we factor that into our thinking about what we're going to see - without predicting who's going to win - in the next several weeks, Doyle?

MR. MCMANUS: And the gap of course is striking to look at between the Democrats and the Republicans. Huge increase in Democratic participation, not so much on the Republican side, an analogous situation in fundraising. For the first time in my memory, the Democratic candidates are racing way ahead of the Republicans taken all together in fundraising. And if that enthusiasm gap persists through the general election, it's going to be very hard for - it was already going to be hard for John McCain to unify a Republican Party that has a big chunk that just plain doesn't like him and it's going to be even harder to raise the money, and then if he can't raise the money to get there.

MS. IFILL: We've all covered a lot of campaigns and I keep testing myself to see why this feels different, but I think it does. It feels like a different kind of campaign. Have you figured out why?

MS. TUMULTY: One thing is that it has never been, I think, more dangerous to try to predict anything. These days, if you see a reporter coming at you with their prediction, run the other way. (Laughter.) The things that we always relied upon, polls, money, size of crowds - none of these things have been great predictors of the outcome.

MS. IFILL: Well, that means we're not going to predict, which is a good thing, because we never do because we're always wrong. Thank you all. Time flew as always. This was a lot of fun. And thank you to Los Angles. Our crystal balls are failing us, so we'll have to stop here and leave the rest to the Super Tuesday voters. Thanks, too, to PBS station KCET and our hosts here at the beautiful Alex Theater in Glendale, California. You can go online for an extra half hour of our California conversation and then join me on "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" Tuesday night for our special election night coverage, and we'll be back in Washington next Friday. Fasten your seatbelts. We'll be back for the next stage of this remarkable campaign. Ride along with us next week on "Washington Week." Good night.