December 16, 2005

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

GWEN IFILL, host: Elections in Iraq: The president claims victory at home but Congress is questioning how far America should be willing to go to meet the president's goals. The president takes his case to the nation's airwaves.

President GEORGE W. BUSH: I made the judgment and I stand by the judgment. I fully understand that I have a job to explain, as clearly as I can to the American people, mistakes, why we're there and how we intend to win.

IFILL: In a series of interviews and speeches, President Bush sought to take full advantage of his bully pulpit. He was helped by the large turnout in Iraq's peaceful parliamentary elections but hurt by an unhappy Congress and by news reports that painted the administration into a corner on the Patriot Act, on torture and on domestic spying.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT): Mr. President, it is time to have some checks and balances in this country. We are a democracy. We are a democracy. Let's have checks and balances, not secret orders and secret courts.

IFILL: Also of concern in Congress, the Supreme Court's decision this week to hear a case which could rewrite some of the rules that created a Republican House majority.

Covering these stories this week: Doyle McManus of the Los Angeles Times; David Sanger of The New York Times; Karen Tumulty of Time magazine; and Jeanne Cummings of The Wall Street Journal.

Announcer: Here again is moderator Gwen Ifill.

IFILL: Good evening.

Analysis: Elections in Iraq

GWEN IFILL, host: It was hard to miss the president this week. Mr. Bush took the reins of his own recovery, using the prospect of good election news from Iraq to clarify a few definitions. Victory, he told Jim Lehrer in an interview earlier today, is not necessarily about devising an exit strategy but about creating a new US ally capable of defending itself and sustaining democracy.

(Excerpt from "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer")

JIM LEHRER: But, Mr. President, does that go counter to most definitions of victory in a war?

President GEORGE W. BUSH: Yes.

LEHRER: I mean, the violence goes on, but we have victory anyhow?

Pres. BUSH: Well, I think that this is a different kind of war.

LEHRER: How major a priority is getting US troops out of there?

Pres. BUSH: Yeah, it's--the biggest priority is winning. And I can understand people wanting to get the troops out. On the other hand--but if you don't put that in the context of achieving objectives--in other words, wars are fought on objectives, not on timetable. So victory means troops are coming out. But troops are coming out may not mean victory.

(End of excerpt)

IFILL: So do we know if the president's definition of victory can be applied to what happened in the polls in Iraq this week--at the polls, that is, in Iraq?

Mr. DOYLE McMANUS (Los Angeles Times): Well, Gwen, probably not. It wasn't--you know, when he defined victory, he said it's a democracy that can defend itself. Well, the election was a great success. It was a step toward that state. But we're still a long way away. The real test is really going to be what happens next. Can the government that results maintain popular support? Can it continue building up security forces? Can it get the upper hand in the insurgency? So the fundamental problems are still there.

But it is worth taking a moment to look at what did succeed in that Iraqi election. The Iraqis had the third election they've had all year and this was easily the most peaceful with the least violence. The Sunni Arabs, who sat out the January election entirely--the old power base for Saddam Hussein's regime--they came roaring in and participated at a very high level. That doesn't mean the insurgency that basically is based in their area--that doesn't mean the insurgency is over. They're perfectly capable of voting with one hand and fighting with the other, but it's more participation in the process than we've seen so far.

And then, finally, it is another piece of all of the trappings of democracy. Let me just quote Judith Yaphe, who's a great American analyst of Iraq. She used to work for the CIA. She said, "Iraq now has more of the trappings of democracy, not just a parliament, elections and a free press, but also ethnic rivalries, unstable alliances and even a dash of corruption and cronyism."

IFILL: Well, here's something that's worth repeating. The last thing that the president said just now, talking to Jim, he said, "So victory means troops are coming out, but troops are coming out may not mean victory." I need you to explain that to me.

Mr. McMANUS: OK. What he is...

IFILL: We're there forever. Is that what he's saying?

Mr. McMANUS: Ah, no. He is, in fact, trying to build a bridge to a point where we're not there forever, but he's trying to buy some time. He's trying to say the security agenda is going to take more time. And what the president has been trying to do all along here is say, `Let's not define our goal in terms of the withdrawal. Let's define our goal in terms of the Iraqis being able to carry on the fight themselves and then the withdrawal will come after that.' That's--that--you know, I didn't hear any change in emphasis there.

Mr. DAVID SANGER (The New York Times): Doyle, you said buy some time and it's an interesting concept here because, on the one hand, he now has a real government to work with. On the other hand, he may have less influence over that government.

Mr. McMANUS: Less influence and a continuing erosion of American public support for the war. I mean, the president has just gotten through giving four major speeches. He's probably going to talk about it again Sunday night when he gives a speech to the country. This is an enormous attempt to use the bully pulpit of the presidency to rally American support behind his number-one foreign policy priority. He's gotten a little tiny bump out of it. He's maybe gotten support for the war up to about 40 percent. This is not--folks in the White House don't think they can get a majority back in favor of this war. He's really just trying to stave off disaster, in effect, to see if that whole program of training Iraqi troops can get there in time.

Ms. JEANNE CUMMINGS (The Wall Street Journal): Well, Doyle, when are we going to know what the results are in Iraq, you know, with the government he will work with?

Mr. McMANUS: Well...

IFILL: And does it matter when we do know it?

Ms. CUMMINGS: Yeah.

Mr. McMANUS: Oh, it will matter. I mean, I think--you know, some people have said is this election the turning point? I think the turning point is actually going to be the first three to six months of the new government when we see if the results of the election work as a government. But, Jeanne, the most frustrating thing for all of us who've covered American elections is this. We've had no results at all basically yet. We're going to get some preliminary results over the next few days, something, you know, some foggy results over the next week, but they're saying it may be months before we know who's in this thing. And then, because it's a parliamentary system, because there are coalitions, there are lots of different parties, there's going to be a lot--there may be months of wrangling before we know who's the majority and who's the prime minister.

Ms. KAREN TUMULTY (Time Magazine): Well, so, Doyle, what does this say, though, about the Sunni minority, this participation in the election? Does this suggest that as Iraq goes forward that they're going to feel fully enfranchised and fully invested in this democracy?

Mr. McMANUS: It would be great if that's how they felt. The good news is that the Sunnis looked at what happened back in January when they elected that interim parliament and they basically aced themselves out. They got very few seats. They looked at that; they said, `That did not work.' You know, we've been talking about President Bush admitting some mistakes. The Sunnis admitted some mistakes. OK, this time the Sunni religious leadership went out and they issued a fatwa, a religious decree, saying you have to go vote. So it's pretty easy to get the numbers up.

Here's the problem that some experts see. The Sunnis believe they're the ruling class of Iraq. They think--in fact, many of them think they're the majority of the population because they've behaved like the majority of the population.

IFILL: But they ain't.

Mr. McMANUS: But they're not, they're 20 percent and the best they're going to get out of this parliament is about 20 percent and they may end up looking at that and say, `We was robbed.' They are in...

IFILL: And then they...

Mr. McMANUS: ...for a tough time.

IFILL: And then, of course, down the road we'll begin to see whether this has the intended effect of spreading democracy throughout the rest of the Middle East, which the president is talking about, which is a whole nother conversation.

Analysis: Domestic issues

GWEN IFILL, host: We'll move on because the president didn't get a lot of time to bask in the glow of those elections in Iraq this week and that's because so much else was happening on the home front. The Senate today derailed an effort to extend the Patriot Act and yesterday Senator John McCain forced the president to change course on a plan to exempt CIA interrogators from a ban on using cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment. McCain claimed his victory seated beside the president in the Oval Office.

Senator JOHN McCAIN (Republican, Arizona): (From Thursday) We've sent a message to the world that the United States is not like the terrorists. We have no beef with them. But what we are is a nation that upholds values and standards of behavior and treatment of all people, no matter how evil or bad they are.

IFILL: But that wasn't all. The New York Times reported today that after 9/11 the president secretly authorized the government to eavesdrop on Americans. This was the president's response to the overall question in today's talk with Jim Lehrer.

President GEORGE W. BUSH: (From "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer") I think the point that Americans really want to know is twofold. One: Are we doing everything we can to protect the people? And, two: Are we protecting civil liberties, as we do so? And my answer to both is `Yes, we are.'

IFILL: Is there an emerging theme here, David?

Mr. DAVID SANGER (The New York Times): There sure is, Gwen. This is the first week we have seen the real pushback on presidential power. Remember, this administration came to Washington quite determined that they were going to build up the powers of the presidency. And then after 9/11 came the natural moment to go do so. And really for the first few years after that you saw the president gain a number of new powers. What's happened this week is Congress has begun to say, `You know, we think this pendulum's gone a little bit too far.' The McCain legislation--Vice President Cheney had gone up to the Hill starting in the summer to basically say CIA officers have to be exempted from this. What you just saw in the tape there was the president backing down from that and saying, `Well, we just worked everything out with Senator McCain.' They didn't. They agreed to basically very minimal legal protections after the fact.

Then the Patriot Act came up today, was in the wake of these new disclosures about how the president appears to have gone around the usual rules for getting a warrant for domestic spying. And, quite overwhelmingly, the White House lost this vote to try to push the Patriot Act through. The president issued a very angry statement this evening basically saying you have 15 days to sort this out or the terrorists win.

IFILL: Well, he did say that, but it seemed that the reason for that kind of a vigorous pushback was because he felt like he was being pushed pretty hard in all of these related issues. Is it that there was a common discovery this week among all of the president's detractors and some of his supporters that maybe the cost of waging a war on terrorism might be too high?

Mr. SANGER: I don't think it's necessarily that the cost is too high, but that the balance has gotten out of whack and this is a White House that has not wanted to discuss that balance in public. You know, you discover after the fact that certain decisions were made within the Oval Office to take on powers against terrorists and these are things that I think in the first year or two after 9/11 people would have just accepted. They're not willing to do that now. Many in the White House say that's because we haven't been hit again but that could get changed quickly if there was another terror attack.

Ms. KAREN TUMULTY (Time Magazine): So your newspaper, as Gwen mentioned, a really big scoop today with the revelation that the president had approved domestic spying after 9/11. Did this effect the outcome of the Patriot Act vote or was this thing headed for trouble anyway?

Mr. SANGER: It's hard to tell. It does look like it was headed for trouble anyway. It may have affected it on the margins. It's always difficult to know. And remember the action on the Patriot Act isn't over and it looks like this will come back in some form. The current Patriot Act may well get extended for some number of months while they try to regroup on this.

Ms. JEANNE CUMMINGS (The Wall Street Journal): Well, David, what about the White House's loss in the House the day before? Did that affect what happened in the Senate?

Mr. SANGER: Well, Jeanne, I think that it may have. What's interesting there is that, again, you had a very large number of Republicans who went over, and, basically, supported the McCain amendment. And that happened on the evening that Steve Hadley, who's the president's national security adviser, was in sort of the last moments of negotiating changes, and after that vote the White House, basically, threw in the towel.

Mr. DOYLE McMANUS (Los Angeles Times): David, what's striking here is that the president's problem at the moment isn't among Democrats, it's among Republicans, not just John McCain but on the Patriot Act it was Republican defections. Is this just an inevitable result of memories of 9/11 fading or are there other factors going on?

IFILL: It should be said that the Republicans jumped off the ship--most visibly today was Representative John Sununu from New Hampshire. The son of the senator, John Sununu, the son of the father's chief of staff. Is that right?

Mr. SANGER: That's right.

IFILL: Right.

Mr. SANGER: He was one of several who jumped off. You know, Doyle, I think that the problem that the president is facing right now is with the Republicans and it's not completely unrelated to the fact that they're beginning to think toward the mid-term elections. They've got to go home and explain an unpopular war and I think one of the more interesting pieces of legislation that passed in this term was the requirement that the president give quarterly reports about the progress of the war. The message was, `We don't really trust you anymore to just take the statement that everything is going fine.'

IFILL: Quickly, is there an argument to be made about whether these tactics are necessary, perhaps?

Mr. SANGER: Well, you know, in each one of these cases I think the president can argue that he knows what it takes to fight the terror war at home and abroad and that the dividing line is nowhere near as bright as it used to be. But the fact of the matter is the argument hasn't taken place in public and therefore many in Congress feel that they were cut out of the discussion. And I think that's a lot of what's going on here.

Analysis: Recalibration of White House

GWEN IFILL, host: Well, sometimes what we are seeing here can be a change in direction. A change in direction can be an opportunity. Sometimes it's forced upon a political leader by circumstance. Either way, we saw a new and different White House on more than one front this week, and the recalibration is important, and perhaps, Karen can explain to us why.

Ms. KAREN TUMULTY (Time Magazine): Well, certainly recalibration and retrenchment, in fact, don't come easily to a president who says that the only decision in his life he's ever regretted was trading Sammy Sosa when he was president of the Texas Rangers. And certainly you heard some of what his admirers would call steadfastness and his detractors would call stubbornness in the interview with Jim Lehrer. But you're right, there have been some changes, some new flexibility out in these speeches on Iraq, in the policy on torture. And what that really reflects is the fact that this White House understands it's got a political problem on its hands and that it has a very short time in which it's going to have to solve it.

We talked to people at the White House and they talk about how January is going to be a pivotal month and a turning-point year. They are expecting that the good news out of Iraq is going to help them, that a Supreme Court nomination is going to help them. But where they seem to be flummoxed, as they try to get back on top of the agenda, is coming up with an agenda to get back on top of. And so as you--as the White House is working on the State of the Union speech, what you're hearing is a real sort of lack of ideas. And the kinds of proposals that the president is going to push for next year, beyond immigration, where he still has very tough going in the House--we saw again this week--are things like improving the transferability of medical technology by, you know, computerizing people's medical records or making it possible for people to take their health benefits from one job to another. It's not the kind of big ideas that Bush used to pride himself on.

Ms. JEANNE CUMMINGS (The Wall Street Journal): Nor is any of that new.

Ms. TUMULTY: Exactly.

Ms. CUMMINGS: They've been proposing those for quite some time. Now one thing I wondered is where is the vice president because he's really been a driving force between--behind a lot of these policies that have now come under attack.

IFILL: And he, in fact, got a setback on that McCain amendment which he had opposed.

Ms. TUMULTY: An enormous one. Well, people that we have talked to, who are very close to the president and the vice president, say that one thing that is striking is how little Dick Cheney, who was, you know, famous for his workaholic habits, is being seen in the West Wing these days, that, in fact, he's spending a lot more time at the Naval Observatory where the vice president's house is, a lot more time out at his new vacation home on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. And it's being described as keeping hours that are more commensurate with his age, his health and his station, which is a real switch.

Mr. DOYLE McMANUS (Los Angeles Times): But, Karen, all second-term presidents have the problem of coming up with big ideas. Bill Clinton had the problem. Ronald Reagan had the problem. This president used to turn to Karl Rove to come up with the magic idea that was going to make the agenda go forward. Where's Karl?

Ms. TUMULTY: Well, Karl Rove is spending a lot of time trying to sort of put the word out that now that the leak investigation has gone through at least--the CIA leak investigation has gone through at least its first phase, he's back and he's back in action. He's talking to members of Congress, former members of Congress, former administration officials, think tanks. He's really in charge of coming up with this new agenda but, you know, the fact is that, again, people who are close to both Karl Rove and the president say that his relationship with the president, while still solid, has been changed as a result of the way Karl Rove feels he was treated in this leak investigation. And people are no longer discounting the possibility that Karl Rove himself may be out the door before too much more time has gone by.

Mr. DAVID SANGER (The New York Times): Karen, can you decode some of these poll numbers for us because the president, obviously, went down to a low, in the mid-30s there about. There's been a little bit of a bump up. Is this Iraq? Is this Katrina? Is this the economy in both directions?

Ms. TUMULTY: Well, certainly, the White House is portraying this as the beginning of a comeback. And it, you know, the laws of physics would have suggested that these numbers were not going to stay down, that these high 30s levels which were the lowest we'd seen in a second-term president since Richard Nixon. But a lot of it is because the news is better. The news out of Iraq this week is good. Oil prices are down. Katrina is off the front page. So really getting real momentum in those poll numbers and where we're also seeing a lot of Independents seem to be moving back toward the president, men. It's going to require something beyond that.

IFILL: One of the things the president did this week as part of his recalibration is accept the responsibility for mistakes that were made by somebody. I wonder if that doesn't also begin to level off those right track wrong, track numbers where you clear the deck by saying, `OK, there are some things that were wrong.' And then people say, `OK, you're more credible; I'll listen to you'?

Ms. TUMULTY: That's right. And it also gives him more maneuvering room than to recalibrate the actual policy. This week he said, for instance, that there had been problems in the rebuilding effort in Iraq. At the time when--now he says they've adjusted and adapted to it and that they're moving forward. Well, at the time, of course, they were denying that any sort of recalibration was happening.

IFILL: OK. Thanks a lot.

Analysis: Supreme Court to review Texas Redistricting

GWEN IFILL, host: On to a different topic. The Supreme Court surprised almost everyone this week by choosing to step into a politically contentious and potentially far-reaching dispute about how members of Congress get elected. At issue: Did Texas legislators play by the rules when they redrew district lines to favor one party? In this case, Republicans and their House leader, Texan Tom DeLay.

Do we know why the court chose to get into any of this, Jeanne?

Ms. JEANNE CUMMINGS (The Wall Street Journal): No.

IFILL: We don't?

Ms. CUMMINGS: No. No. We don't.

IFILL: We don't have the magic finger to tell us what...

Ms. CUMMINGS: I wasn't there.

IFILL: ...those Supreme Court...

Ms. CUMMINGS: They didn't send me that e-mail. But they have a good reason to get involved and that is a year ago the court made a mess of redistricting law and maybe this is a chance for them to go back. I mean, basically, last--the Pennsylvania case was last year and in that case the question was: How much can state legislatures allow partisan politics to motivate where they draw the boundaries of a House district? They should be roughly the same size, about 600,000 people in each district. But legislators for years, Democrats and Republicans, have taken this as an opportunity to stack the deck and so they put all the Democrats and Republicans into one or they dilute them among several and they try to work it all to their advantage.

Well, in the Pennsylvania case, the court upheld the Pennsylvania map, but the ruling was a mess. Four judges said, `The map is constitutional in part because we shouldn't even be asking these questions. It's none of our business.' Four other justices said, `It certainly is our business and the Pennsylvania legislators went too far and it's unconstitutional.' That left Justice Kennedy in the middle and he split the baby, saying, `We can talk about these issues, but that the Pennsylvania legislators did just fine,' leaving no guidance for the lower courts to figure this out. Well this is an opportunity for them to straighten it out. The Texas map was redrawn at Tom DeLay's urging. It was a net gain of six seats for the Republicans, very important, really cemented their majority in the House. And so we'll see what the judges have to say about it.

Ms. KAREN TUMULTY (Time Magazine): Well, six seats could very well matter in this next election. Are there likely to be any changes, Jeanne, in the actual district lines in time to make a difference in 2006?

Ms. CUMMINGS: It's hard to tell. The Supreme Court can do anything it wants but I find that very hard to believe that it will, in time for 2006, because the primaries in Texas are so early. They take place one week after the argument at the Supreme Court. So you will have your candidate field in place by whenever time they reach--they issue an opinion, so I doubt it for '06, but it will give the Democrats a boost if it's declared unconstitutional because they could say, `Look, these people, you know, they cheated to keep their majority and it goes to their whole corruption and arrogance of power message that they're working up for this year.'

Mr. DOYLE McMANUS (Los Angeles Times): Jeanne, let me ask another timing question. If the hearings for Justice Alito go ahead on schedule and if he gets confirmed, as I think most of us expect, would he be there for this case? And what do your inside sources in the Alito and Roberts' chambers tell you?

IFILL: And before we leap ahead to his confirmation, isn't there some question about him about his background on voting rights cases on this one vote, one...

Ms. CUMMINGS: Yes, yes, that's a critical question in this case.

IFILL: It could be connected to this?

Ms. CUMMINGS: Oh, yeah, that is the question in this case. It's one person, one vote doctrine. And, basically, when--the big questions and weaknesses of the Texas map is that the Texas Legislature--this was the second round of redistricting down there. They did it in 2003. A federal court had drawn the map in 2001 when partisan fights made the Legislature fail at it. So in 2003 they redid it at DeLay's urging, using old Census data. Now we all know people move a lot and so the boundaries--the number of people supposed to be about 600,000, if you're using old data you don't know where the people are.

Now your question about Alito. Justice O'Connor and Chief Justice Rehnquist were both among the four justices who said, `This isn't any of our business.' So if Alito and Roberts are on the courts and reflect that, they don't make a difference. Where they could make a difference is if they surprise us.

Mr. DAVID SANGER (The New York Times): Jeanne, you know, sometimes a case is just a case; it's an interesting constitutional issue. Sometimes the court is signaling it really wants to go send a message. Accepting the fact that John Roberts didn't drop the memo off on your doorstep, what are the signals here?

Ms. CUMMINGS: Well, first of all they had five meetings to decide to take the case. That's a lot of conversations to decide to take a case that you're not going to make a point when you issue your opinion. They expedited the hearing. They were setting cases for April; this one pops up March 1st. Instead of one hour of argument, they got two hours of arguments. That's led a lot of lawyers to think Justice Kennedy has made up his mind about some of these issues and he's going to, you know, really make a change in the law.

IFILL: And at the same time we are watching the case involving the indictment of Tom DeLay, connected to this in a complicated way, that we don't have time to explain, unfold in Texas so it's going to be very interesting to watch.

GWEN IFILL, host: Thank you, everybody.

Things do not appear to be slowing down for the holidays so we will be here watching it all for you. Joining us on Sunday night at 9 PM Eastern on most PBS stations for special "NewsHour" coverage of the president's address to the nation. Keep track of daily developments on "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer." And then tell your friends about the WASHINGTON WEEK podcast. If you miss us on the air, you can now go to pbs.org to download the program to your computer or MP3 player. Just like Gwen. I do it every week. And then we'll check in with you again next week on WASHINGTON WEEK. Good night.