Friday, March 14, 2008

MS. IFILL: Race, gender, governors, and generals, all that and more tonight on "Washington Week." Who is winning?

SEN. BARACK OBAMA (D-IL): I've won twice as many states as Senator Clinton. I've won more of the popular vote than Senator Clinton. I have more delegates than Senator Clinton.

SEN. HILLARY CLINTON (D-NY): I don't want you voting on a leap of faith, I want you to look at the record, I want you to look at the results, and then I want you to vote for the person you think can deliver that.

MS. IFILL: And who's losing?

GERALDINE FERRARO: They'd better just lay off me. I am outraged that they would think I'm racist - absolutely outraged.

GOV. ELIOT SPITZER (D-NY): I'm resigning from the office of governor.

MS. IFILL: Plus, the lead military commander in the Middle East steps down. What does that tell us about U.S. policy in Iraq and in Iran?

Covering the stories, Michael Duffy of "Time" magazine, Todd Purdum of "Vanity Fair," and Martha Raddatz of ABC News.

ANNOUNCER: Celebrating 40 years of journalistic excellence, live from our nation's capital, this is "Washington Week" with Gwen Ifill, produced in association with "National Journal."

ANNOUNCER: Once again, live from Washington, moderator Gwen Ifill.

MS. IFILL: Good evening. Perhaps we should not be surprised that this historic election, sooner or later was going to turn to debates over gender and race, but like everything else in this wild campaign year, the debate turned suddenly fierce, fast. Credit the latest turn of events to Geraldine Ferraro. The former New York congresswoman, former vice presidential nominee and steadfast Hillary supporter gave this interview to the Torrance, California "Daily Breeze" last week in advance of a speech she was due to give. "If Obama was a white man," she said, "he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman of any color, he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is and the country is caught up in the concept." Obama, of course, called this ridiculous, and Ferraro gave up her volunteer role in the Clinton campaign. But one is left to wonder what was this really all about?

Michael, pull back the veil - explain.

MR. DUFFY: In trying to explain a week like this, Gwen, it's probably better to plot a course from the reality of the campaign to Geraldine Ferraro, rather than Ferraro back to reality. There's a, I think, good news and bad news for Barack Obama in general. He is ahead in the delegate count. He's ahead in the popular vote count, but he's been watching his support among white voters in the last couple of weeks fall. He began in Wisconsin and Virginia and Maryland, with above 40, sometimes 50, sometimes 60 percent of the white vote, but in recent weeks in Ohio and then this week in Mississippi, it fell below 40 and then below 30 percent. That's a worry especially as you go into states like Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and West Virginia.

Meanwhile, Ms. Clinton has almost the opposite problem. While she's holding fine with white votes, she's seen her share of the black vote really fall through the floor. She was getting three in 10. Now she's down in the case if Mississippi to one in 10. And she knows that if she gets the nomination, she isn't going to do very well in the fall without black votes. And it's into this environment that Geraldine Ferraro either stepped or stumbled, depending on your point of view, this week, suggesting that Obama wouldn't be where he was if he were not black.

MS. IFILL: Now right after Geraldine Ferraro stepped or stumbled, then the skeptics would say coincidentally, we heard some - came to light, some videotapes of Barack Obama's former pastor, who has said very inflammatory things from his pulpit. The question as I look at all of these things playing out, Todd, is whether all of this dust - first of all, is it helping anybody? And is it hurting anybody? And how much of it can we know is by design and how much of it can we know is just happens to spilling out now?

MR. PURDUM: I think most it happens to be spilling out now. My general theory of politics is politicians couldn't conspire to tie their shoelaces, just like we reporters couldn't. But some of it is deliberate in the sense that it works to a certain degree to buttress Ms. Clinton support among white voters, to put the focus on the fact that Senator Obama is not doing very well among white voters. That is a self-fulfilling prophecy then sometimes. But I think it risks hurting both of them in the longer term and hurting the Democrats against Senator McCain in the fall - possibly very badly.

MS. IFILL: You covered Geraldine Ferraro off an on in different jobs over the years. Was this a surprise to you, that she was so tough and so unrelenting.

MR. PURDUM: Not really because she's a pretty fierce person. She is what she is. She says what she says. She's the Edith Piaf of American politics. She doesn't have any regrets. And I think she also feels - as a woman, she feels tremendous solidarity with Senator Clinton and she feels that it's still easier - she said as much - that she thinks it's easier to be sexist in our society than it is to be racist. So I think some of this is probably an overreaction to what she sees from her life as a 70-something-year-old woman from Queens.

MS. IFILL: Michael, when you talk about the split, which seems to be developing - I'm not sure if Mississippi is the perfect example, but just for the sake of argument - where do white voters go if they are alienated from voting for Barack Obama and where do black voters go if they're alienated from voting for Hillary Clinton?

MR. DUFFY: Well, that's one of the things that is shaping up as the dilemma for the party as a whole. You've seen at the same time that these trends have happened on the racial votes. You've seen dissatisfaction by some Clinton supporters increase. They're less satisfied with Barack Obama; and vice versa for Obama supporters.

At the same time, McCain's - John McCain's positives are rising among Democratic voters. So that creates the possibility - obviously if this continues the way it is going, that we'll see if Barack Obama, say, is nominated, more white votes go to the Republican Party. I think that the other piece that's worth noting is that while it's hard to determine what of this is orchestrated and what it isn't, there's a widespread feeling in Obama's camp that there've been a series of these moments by Clinton surrogates since really before South Carolina, all the way through, each time dismissed by the Clinton campaign as a gaffe or a misstatement or a mistake.

MS. IFILL: Billy Shaheen, Bob Johnson

MR. DUFFY: Bill Clinton. And Ms. Clinton herself repudiated, I think, and regretted it. But it also took them two days to broom her off the stage. They didn't seem in any particular hurry to do that. And that has engendered bad feelings on both sides. And if you ask Obama's camp, they'll say, "well this is - this is hurting us."

MS. RADDATZ: What about Obama's reaction? Watching Obama's reaction this week I had to wonder whether some people thought maybe he should have come back harder, come back in a different way.

MR. DUFFY: Now, they do - I think there are people on both sides of this. All through Obama's campaign, he's been very controlled and very careful when talking about race, trying to move past it, trying to transcend the issue. He says to his staff on a regular basis, stay focused, stay cool, don't overreact to this. It's - their theory that the more this takes place, the better it is for them, but I think they actually are worried that it is having -

MS. IFILL: But, Todd, does Obama campaign or does the Clinton campaign - do they have a strategy in their hip pockets for rising above this dust that they're stirring up, or are they just going to play it as it lays and hope that one person's standing at the end?

MR. PURDUM: Well, look at where they are relatively speaking. I think Ms. Clinton is served by raising a cloud of dust. It's like a football game, a lead in the cloud of dust. Senator Obama's whole political career has been based on not falling for the sucker punch, not doing a traditional thing, rising above traditional politics. So what makes this very dangerous for him is, if he gets in there and he's counterpunching too hard then he looks like a conventional politician, which is the last thing he can afford to be. But if he looks deft, if he looks that sticks and stones you may break my bones, you can't really get under my skin, then I think it's okay for him. And so it's a challenge, but it's clearly in the Clinton campaign's interests to have this dust up in the air.

MS. RADDATZ: But more than the dust is it hurting Obama? Is this sort of racial code hurting Obama, do you think?

MR. DUFFY: Well, I think there's a - there is some evidence that, it's - certainly, his numbers in the polls are beginning to change in terms of the makeup of his coalition, whether it's tied to the code is hard to say. One Obama official told me tonight that it's definitely hurting, whether it's orchestrated or not. You can see even in Ohio - this is now two weeks ago - it seems like an eternity. There're 88 counties in Ohio. Obama won five; five of 88, the big four cities and the wealthiest white county in the state. So that's a picture of his coalition.

MS. IFILL: Something I saw on the NBC-"Wall Street Journal" poll today, which suggests that maybe some of it is also hurting the Clintons, and that's when asked about negative/positive feelings about Bill Clinton. He's now up to - I think it's a 44 percent negative. People say they're very uncomfortable with Bill Clinton's role in the campaign. Is that damaging or is that something can be shoved off to the corner?

MR. PURDUM: No, I think that's damaging because that comes back to the question, are you getting a package deal. Ms. Clinton has succeeded in this year when she's been there on her own, in her own pioneering way, finding her voice in New Hampshire, speaking to the women of Ohio and Texas. That's been when she succeeded. When she's caught up in the ball of wax involving her husband and a hangover effect from the Clinton years, that's troubling for her.

MS. IFILL: Let's talk about another big fight which is playing out this week - a long week it was. Perhaps even more confounding than our periodic debates over identity politics is the ongoing public negotiation over what is to become of Democrats in Florida and Michigan.

SEN. OBAMA: What we believe is that there should be some way of arriving at a fair settlement that respects the fact that there were rules in place, but also make sure that the Michigan and Florida voters are seated.

SEN. CLINTON: Nearly two and a half million Americans in those two states who participated in the primary election are in danger of being excluded from our Democratic process. And I think that's wrong.

MS. IFILL: Senator Clinton, Senator Obama. Someone wants to translate all that for us?

MR. PURDUM: Well, I think it gets very tricky for Senator Clinton because Senator Obama played by the rules, and so did she until it turned out not to be convenient for her. Everything that she's saying now reminds me if what I heard week after week in Tallahassee during the recount when Jim Baker was down there saying that what Al Gore wanted to do was change the rules after the game has been played. And no matter how she slices it, that is what Senator Clinton's asking to do now. And that isn't fair. When she said that the Michigan election was fair, Senator Obama's name didn't appear on the ballot, and she said that was his choice. Come on. It wasn't really his choice. It's what all the other candidates did and it's what the Democratic Party told them to do. So I don't think it's fair to punish him for following the rules just because she'd like to get those delegates.

MS. IFILL: Has this gotten so complicated that the average voters number one are tuning out and that all of the party leaders are just basically intent on finding a deal at this point.

MR. DUFFY: Well, it's gotten so complicated that there are moments when I even tune out a little bit. And you notice that in the case of Florida, which proposed a fix, that they weren't all that thrilled about the state party, the members of the Florida delegation in Congress said, "I don't think we're for this."

MS. IFILL: Mail-in vote they were talking about.

MR. DUFFY: Right. The only clarity that I can find on what is going to happen, since it's really hard to know what happens going forward, is someone said to me nothing will change in terms of until both campaigns agree - Obama has to agree to a redo or kind of a redo and so does Clinton. That's not going to happen, I think, until after we get past the regular voting, but maybe.

MS. RADDATZ: A little bit more about this campaign fatigue because even beyond Michigan and Florida and voters tuning out, are they tuning out in general? Are they really tired of Obama and Clinton yet, or not? And then how do they get that back? I know you are.

MR. DUFFY: No, no, I said confused. I didn't say fatigued.

MS. IFILL: I think the turnout in this city was four times as what it was last time.

MS. RADDATZ: But in this long period moving up to important primaries.

MR. DUFFY: Well, if we have a lot more weeks like the one we had this week. People may get disgusted. But so far, as Gwen points out, the interest in this remains extraordinarily high and turnout, as you noted, running exponentially larger. So I think people remain interested.

MS. IFILL: Let me ask you about two states, one looking backward, one looking forward. Who won Texas, Michael?

MR. DUFFY: You'll have to call me in August. In some places, the primary took place, they nearly split those votes, but as you know, the caucuses which happened later -they're just now counting the caucus votes because a million people voted that night in the caucuses had to tear off pieces of paper and make people vote on them. And they're still counting the little slips of paper. Get back to me in June.

MS. IFILL: So people can stop writing us and saying that we didn't - that was giving her the state and she did win the popular vote. That much we know

MR. DUFFY: Fifty-one to 47.

MS. IFILL: We just don't know what the delegate outcome is. And what's supposed to happen in Pennsylvania? We heard Hillary Clinton's top campaign strategist say, I think yesterday, if Barack Obama, who's not heavily favored there, does not win Pennsylvania, he can't win the general election.

MR. PURDUM: Well, first of all - obviously a Democrat would really need to win Pennsylvania to win the general election. I think it's assuming facts not evidence to say that Barack Obama couldn't win Pennsylvania in a general election. And I think this goes back to the question before about whose voters are more charged up and whose will keep participating for whoever the Democrat is. And it just seems to me that Barack Obama bids fair to do fine in the general election in Pennsylvania, although is an issue if he cannot win big state like that, just as it was in Ohio.

MS. RADDATZ: Speaking of that, how does John McCain fare after -

MS. IFILL: Yes, I was getting to this -

MS. RADDATZ: Whatever happened to him? I think I answered my own question.

MR. PURDUM: He's going off to Israel and the Mideast, right? So I think it has to be a pretty good week for him.

MS. IFILL: Well that's - but that's the question to me is the long-term damage or the long-term fallout from the squabbling, from the indecision, from the uncertainty -

MR. DUFFY: From the racial divide. Both Clinton and Obama are going to - we saw them on the Senate floor briefly at the end of the week patting each other on the back and talking.

MS. IFILL: Yes, what was that?

MR. DUFFY: You could hear a kind of massive sigh of relief throughout the city, saying, "Oh, look, they're still on speaking terms.

MS. IFILL: I think at the same moment they were doing that, their advisors were still -

MR. DUFFY: Shooting something at each other. They're now poised on the edge of a place where they could - they're kind of tied up and each has what the other needs, whether this kind of vote or that kind of vote. And that raises again the prospect which everyone thinks is impossible and never going to happen, that they eventually team up. I tend to still be in the it's-never-going-to-happen camp, but if we keep going down this road, neither of them will have the coalition needed to beat John McCain in the fall. And that - and so that's now. We'll see what happens later.

MS. IFILL: If we know anything that's true about this election, it's that just as things heat up, they pull back, and then they heat up again.

Okay, but that wasn't the only subtext. There's another one going on at this week's political debate. Senator John McCain - that guy we mentioned, you remember him, the Republican nominee - he said he, not Clinton or Obama, would be best equipped to answer that ringing White House phone. Remember the ringing White House phone? Both Democrats responded by rolling out military supporters to attest to their abilities. This even as the top military commander in the Middle East stepped down amid questions about his support of the U.S. policy he was supposed to be carrying out. We'll start with those political generals.

Martha, do they help?

MS. RADDATZ: Well one question I had this week is - you had the Hillary Clinton campaign talking about all of these 30 generals and admirals and trotting them out. And then I know a call went out from the Obama campaign, saying we need generals. We need endorsements. They had a couple of guys from the Air Force. Let's remember, we're in a ground war. I think the generals when they come out and endorse, people may see, "oh, isn't that great?" But aren't these the same people who are complaining that Rumsfeld politicized the military and was asking which generals should be promoted by their political bent.

I think the general feeling among the military is that it is not a good idea to have the members of the military - senior officers - endorse candidates. Advise, yes. They all need advice. But if you give Obama advice and you're a senior officer, give Clinton advice; give McCain advice if he wants it. But trotting these guys out in a political scene just reeks to a lot of them as using the troops as a prop, which they were always accusing George Bush of doing as well.

MR. DUFFY: These are retired, so you're kind of suggesting a lifetime ban.

MS. RADDATZ: Well, let's face it. Why are they being called? They're not being called because they were picking olives for 30 years. They're being called because of their military experience. They do not set policy. They execute policy, while in the military. I know a lot of people say junior officers if they look up to their senior officers and think "I wonder which way, maybe we can read him because maybe afterwards he's doing this." And civilians - it is civilian leadership of the military.

MS. IFILL: But aren't they valuable in the same way that the mayor of Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, is valuable only for next two weeks, five weeks?

MS. RADDATZ: The American public puts the military so far above the rest of us, mainly because they're not politicized. And I think you might damage that institution and believe me, this is a big debate among a lot of people in the military, but I think, again, there's a difference between endorsing and advising.

MR. PURDUM: I think that's a very good point. But suppose General Colin Powell - just suppose - endorsed Barack Obama.

MS. RADDATZ: Or running for office. And I think once you - not Colin Powell running for office, but once you're out and you're in the political arena and you're a part of the government, it's different than endorsing. It's different - Eisenhower, it's different if you run for office. It's different if you're Wes Clark. You are a citizen after all and if that's what you want to do.

MS. IFILL: Let me ask you about another thing that came out in the military. And that was Admiral Fox Fallon - nicknamed. He stepped down as head of U.S. Central Command and it was much questioning about the circumstance of his departure. What really happened?

MS. RADDATZ: Well, the circumstances of his departure are quite frankly because he gave a whole lot of press interviews saying things that the president, that the vice president probably in particular, and that many people in the Pentagon did not want him saying in the press.

Let me go back to that same point. The military does not set policy. They execute policy. If you read a lot of these interviews, you heard Admiral Fallon saying things like it doesn't help if we're rattling the saber on Iran. In a sense that left the feeling that he was questioning policy.

MS. IFILL: But I've heard Secretary Gates say something very similar, the last thing we need is another war in the Middle East. How is that different than what Admiral Fallon was saying?

MS. RADDATZ: Because he's a civilian, because he heads the Defense Department, and that Admiral Fallon is supposed to execute policy. He's supposed to give his advice. He's supposed to give his advice to civilian leaders and I'm sure he did, but by taking that out into the press and looking like he's not on the same page with the policy and questioning that - now people might say, well, wait a minute, he's a hero, because he did those things. He had a chance to do that -

MS. IFILL: Was it really not on the same page?

MS. RADDATZ: I think probably Admiral Fallon was pushing diplomacy more than some people in the administration, that he did not want to make it look like we were about to bomb Iran. And I think there're many people in the administration probably who think that's just fine for Iran to think.

MR. DUFFY: But tell us how a four-star CINC who's been through the military 30 years, gets to this point and makes this kind of mistake, knowing that he's supposed to know that? How did he do?

MS. RADDATZ: I think that's a good question. I think in some ways the Navy may be different in how they train. And it's you out there alone and it's you've got to do this. This when you - when you talk to Admiral Fallon - yes - when you talk to Admiral Fallon, you hear him saying in this quote from the "Esquire" magazine that really got him in trouble, "it's my job to do that." It's my job to do that. The fact is, it's not just his job. He is in - he is part of this entire strategy building, tactics building organization that should come together in the end.

MS. IFILL: Is there a perception that's taking root, which maybe also what's driving some of the reaction to comments like that, that things aren't going as well as they have been in Iraq with the surge, with the uptick in violence?

MS. RADDATZ: Well, I'd say - I guess against that background with Iraq, I don't think that had really much to do with that. I think the administration is pretty much thrilled with the way things are going in Iraq right now as far as the surge is going. The one thing that's - what's really stood out to me today is an interview in the "Washington Post" with General David Petraeus and he talked about the Iraqis not doing their part politically. Now, we've talked about that 100 times around this table. Everybody has. But Dave Petraeus does not say that, he does not pressure the Iraqi government in public, which tells me things aren't going that well in private.

MR. PURDUM: Well, Martha, next week the Iraq war will have gone for five years, which is by more than a year longer than the United States involvement in World War II.

MS. RADDATZ: Almost 4,000 dead.

MR. PURDUM: What do we see for it and how long are we going to be there?

MS. RADDATZ: Well, I think we can't answer that and I think what this president is trying to plan for is what happens in the next year, but after that it depends on who gets in there.

MS. IFILL: And Martha's getting on a plane, going off with Vice President Cheney to the Middle East. Tell us all about it when you get back.

MS. RADDATZ: Sure will.

MS. IFILL: Thank you everybody. Once again, we're leaving you just a wee bit early to give you the opportunity to support your local PBS station, which in turn supports us. You like my little Saint Patrick's Day - wee bit? Keep up with daily developments all week on "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer." And we'll be back full-length next week on "Washington Week." And to Nancy Duffy, happy birthday. Good night.