Friday, October 30, 1998

DATE October 30, 1998 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 8:00-8:30 PM NIELSEN AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK PBS
PROGRAM Washington Week in Review

Leads: Washington Week in Review
KEN BODE, host:

A last look ahead at the first midterm election ever held in the shadow of a
possible impeachment. Think about that, tonight on WASHINGTON WEEK IN REVIEW.

Announcer: This is WASHINGTON WEEK IN REVIEW for Friday, October 30th, 1998.

Now here's moderator Ken Bode.

BODE:Good evening, and welcome to WASHINGTON WEEK.

On Tuesday you get to vote. How many Americans actually will do that is one
of the larger questions that hangs over this election. And then, what issues
really matter out there? What are the candidates talking about and what are
they spending their advertising money to promote on television?

We'll look at a Republican roll of the dice, the decision in these final days
to remind voters one last time that President Clinton looked them in the eye
and denied having an affair with `that woman,' as if voters weren't telling
every pollster in sight they're already tired of hearing about all that.

And we'll ask our panel tonight to tell you what they've seen on the campaign
trail this year that they'll remember the most, and also what they think you,
as viewers, should look for on election night.

That's what's up here, and joining me are: Tom Friedman of The New York
Times; E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post; David Broder of The Washington
Post; and Gloria Borger of US News and CBS News.

Analysis: The absence of the Clinton impeachment question on
the campaign trail
KEN BODE, host:

Gloria, starting with you and, once again, this question of impeachment and
Bill Clinton. The post-election analysis will be, one way or the other,
whoever wins, that it was a referendum one way or the other on impeachment.
But you were up looking at races and you found that...

Ms. GLORIA BORGER (US News & World Report; CBS News Analyst): No.

BODE:...topic A is--is not on the--not on the agenda.

Ms. BORGER: No. No, the--the...

BODE:What is topic A?

Ms. BORGER: Monica--Monica Lewinsky is nowhere visible on the campaign
trail. We journalists--I think all of us sitting at this table--went out
there looking for the anger, looking for all this talk about impeachment, and,
you know, we really didn't find that. It is receding. So what I think
Republican campaign strategists have done this week is they've gotten together
and they've said, `We've got to find a way to bring it back, to tie the
president's scandal back to the Democratic Party.' So they've decided to
w--to run a few ads in some select districts that they believe do that. I
think we've gone one, so why don't we take a look?

BODE:We have. This--this is the Republicans' roll of the dice that I talked
about, a 30-second ad running in not too many districts, and most of them in
the South.

(Excerpt from political advertisement)

BODE:You know what they say is that an ad won't change your mind, but it
will go inside you and pull out what's in there if you already made your mind
up that way, and that's what that finger-pointing does.

Ms. BORGER: It's--it's Pavlovian. I think what they're trying to do is put
the red meat out there. And what--they--they want to get out the hard-core
Republican voters, they want to get out the moderate Republican voters, and
they didn't want to create too much of a backlash among Democrats. They
didn't want to stimulate Democrats to get out to vote. So they--so this
ad--they figure that the president pointing at you is enough of a signal to
say, `We want a balance.' Balance was a very important word to these people.
Checks and balances also happened in 1996. `We want a balance here. If you
don't trust this guy, then you need a Republican Congress to balance the
Democratic president.'

BODE:E.J.

Mr. E.J. DIONNE (The Washington Post): I think the first thing is, no one
will ever be able to do this (wags finger) to anybody again, ever. I think
that a--that a lot of Democrats looked at these ads and were very excited, not
just because the issue was brought back, but they figured that the Republicans
were looking at polls saying, `Gee, that energized Republican base might not
be so energized.' And these ads are about doing that. And a lot of
conservatives are saying, `We should have given them issues and we didn't give
them any issues, and now we've got to fall back on this.'

I think the--the other thing is the use of this kind of argument instead of
using their money for this, instead of various other kinds of attacks on
Democrats that might be more effective. And I think the--so the Democrats
were in a good mood about these ads for a lot of reasons this week.

BODE:David, let...

Mr. DAVID BRODER (The Washington Post): Let me suggest a m...

Mr. DIONNE: Even though they said they were scurrilous.

Mr. BRODER: ...a minimalist interpretation. This came very late. It came
at a time when the airwaves are already saturated with ads by the candidates
themselves. I don't think this is going to do a darn thing to this election.

Ms. BORGER: Well, they're only running in about--in about 30 districts.

BODE:Yes, but--yes, but...

Mr. DIONNE: Yeah.

BODE:...it's on the air, on the evening news, on CNN; it's on our program.
It's all over the country. So they can't have put it out there not knowing
that if you spend $10 million, however you spend it, we're going to be looking
at that ad.

Mr. THOMAS FRIEDMAN (The New York Times): Clinton, though, you know, Ken,
has had some pretty good free ads from the Wye Plantation these last two
weeks, too, of him basically putting together some very effective diplomacy.
I think it was Jonathan Alter who wrote in Newsweek last week that Clinton
could be the first im--president to be impeached and win the Nobel Peace Prize
in the same year...

BODE:Well, you know...

BODE:...somebody--somebody had to be the first to say that, right?

BODE:Let's go to Da--let's go to David Broder. And, David, tell us, if this
isn't an issue out there, what issues do seem to have traction with the
voters?

Mr. BRODER: Well, the answer to that is, if you look at what the governor
candidates are running for, particularly the incumbent governors--education
far and away above anything else, not just the money they've invested but the
way in which they're trying to pull up the standards, that's important to
people. Health care's always important. Law enforcement's always important.
Jobs, taxes, welfare--those are the things on which governors are running, and
on which most governors who are on the ballot are going to be re-elected.

You get to the Washington issues and they seem very abstract to people.
Social Security--a lot of ads about it, but there's not been a vote on Social
Security. There may or may not be next year. Patient's bill of rights--lot
of ads on that. Never came to a vote. Not a way that you can say, `My
opponent did this or that' about that. The budget--bipartisan in Washington.
Very hard to find it. They've lost most of the big issues that might have
been there if a different congressional agenda had emerged this year. But you
end up with a lot of really marginal questions being raised and a lot of very
personal stuff.

BODE:You know, David, it seems to me that in this particular election the
Republican--the old Republican issues agenda that used to be so effective--the
death penalty and taxes and crime and defense and welfare--the Democrats have
pretty well been inoculated a--against those issues now, and the issues you
just talked about--HMOs and--and Social Security and education--that is a
pretty good Democratic issue agenda, but it does get a little submerged by
President Clinton's problems.

Mr. BRODER: No. I would have--I was with you right up till the last thing.
I'm not sure that it's being i--me--but the cla--the real demonstration of the
point that you made about the issue agenda shifting is the California
governor's race. Dan Lungren, the Republican candidate, ran on exactly the
issues that you said were the traditional issues. He's losing that race to a
guy who's talking about education, health care and those issues.

Mr. DIONNE: And the--and...

Ms. BORGER: Well, a...

Mr. DIONNE: I'm sorry. In some ways, Gray Davis, the Democrat, is running
as if he were Governor Pete Wilson, the Republican. He is running as the
centrist. And I think what David said about the governors' races points to a
fight we're going to have after this election in the Republican Party. I
think the Republican governors--one Republican I talked to in New York said
this: They all run as pragmatic centrists, kind of like a guy called Bill
Clinton. They get their message out, they win elections; they're going to win
by landslides. Meanwhile, the Washington congressional Republicans can't find
a message to run on except impeachment. I think you're going to see
Republicans talking about that after this vote.

Ms. BORGER: Well, the--the problem, I think, is also that they've lost the
tax cut issue. A poll this week in The New York Times says that the public is
completely divided now over which party is better equipped to give them tax
cuts. That was the most important thing to the Republican Party.
Congressional Republicans have lost that. So the public is sort of confused.
They give Bill Clinton the credit for balancing the budget. Welfare
reform--no longer a Republican issue, now a Democratic issue.

BODE:So is that...

Ms. BORGER: It's a midterm election. It's a midterm election, which is about
a lot of local things.

Analysis: The New York race between Al D'Amato and Chuck Schumer
KEN BODE, host:

Let's go into a cou--few of the individual races. E.J., you were up in New
York and you looked at one of the closest and one of the nastiest Senate races
going on between Chuck Schumer and Alfonse D'Amato.

Mr. E.J. DIONNE (The Washington Post): Well, see, I grew up in
Massachusetts where politics is really rough, so I confess that I enjoy this
fight. All the metaphors--bar fight, brawl, pro wrestling--and you've...

BODE:Hockey.

Mr. DIONNE: ...hockey. Yeah, that's a--but only the check part of hockey,
not puck on--no puck involved.

Mr. THOMAS FRIEDMAN (The New York Times): ...(Unintelligible). Right.

Mr. DIONNE: I mean, what you have are two very tough candidates, Al D'Amato,
who has always been tough and managed to bulldoze every one of his opponents,
including the late Jacob Javits, one of the great senators we've had in a
primary. And now--now he's running to Chuck Schumer, who is just as tough as
he is. If D'Amato throws a brick, Schumer throws a cinder block. If D'Amato
pulls out a r--a rifle, Schumer will get a mortar and shoot back. And what
you have now, it--it's kind of thrown D'Amato a little off his game, and i--it
led to what we could call `Putzgate.' And I won't explain that word for this
audience. I won't translate it, because we're a family show. But Al D'Amato
called Chuck Schumer a putz, then he denied...

Ms. GLORIA BORGER (US News & World Report; CBS News Analyst): A putzhead, I
think it was.

Mr. DIONNE: ...head, yes. Yes. And then he denied that he said it. And so
the issue, as in so many of these scandals we have, became whether he told the
truth about the event, not whether he did it. D'Amato had done a clever thing
for a while. Schumer's a workaholic, and yet he missed a lot of votes
campaigning for the Senate. And so D'Amato ran a series of ads on all of the
missed votes. This week Schumer's people discovered that Al D'Amato had
missed a lot of votes as county supervisor, so they threw that back at him.
Now what missed votes have to do with the future...

Ms. BORGER: Right.

Mr. DIONNE: ...of America and the global economy is another thing. And this
election has not been wildly substantive. The interesting thing, though, is
that, in fact, on issues, which they get around to once in a while, and
Schumer has used some of those Democratic issues and that--David talked about
it--that it looks like D'Amato is running a campaign about 10 years old.
That's what somebody up there told me. It's not quite done--it's not quite
the campaign for this year. And Schumer has a very good shot at being the
first guy who's managed to beat Al D'Amato.

Ms. BORGER: What about Hillary Clinton? She's been up there a lot for--for
Chuck Schumer.

Mr. DIONNE: Well, Schumer--this is a case where the impeachment issue is on
the table, because Schumer has said flatly, from the beginning, `We should
censure him. We shouldn't impeach him.' That seems to be helping him up
there. And, in fact, Al D'Amato, who did the investigation of Mr. Clinton a
few years ago, is--is staying away from that issue entirely. So he--he has
clearly calculated that in New York, one of the more liberal and Democratic
states, it isn't good to be running against Bill Clinton this year.

Analysis: The foreign policy outlook relative to the coming
election
KEN BODE, host:

Well, let's move on to Tom Friedman and get you in here, Tom. Whoever wins
and whether we wind up calling this election a victory for one side or the
other, or what is--now seems to be the coin of the realm among Washington
cognoscenti, which is a status-quo election, still we go into impeachment
season when it's over with, and we have a president who faces some very
interesting situations in foreign policy.

Mr. THOMAS FRIEDMAN (The New York Times): Well, yeah. Ken, you know, they
may not know what this election is about, but I can tell you what they're
going to find when the winners come to Washington on some very important
international issues. The first is Brazil. A huge bailout package is being
assembled for Brazil right now; probably going to cost the United States some
big dollars, both bilaterally and through the IMF. These guys are going to
step up to it. If Bradil--Brazil tumbles, big domino coming our way. Russia,
if they ever get their act together--there's a proposal by the
administration--we want to buy up their nukes. It costs a lot of money. So
that's--whole set of `How much you ready to pay?' issues.

Then you got China. This administration has basically shifted its China
policy from disengagement to engagement. So theoretically, they've moved.
And the Congress now has acted on most favored nation. But meanwhile, up
there in the Congress, they're all passing all these amendments to undercut
the policy. The Chinese delivered on Iran, delivered on Pakistan, re--cutting
back their military sales. They want satellites now. Is the administration
going to step up to that? A--a--another very big issue.

And lastly, Saddam Hussein. You can always count on Saddam, OK? I got good
new...

Ms. GLORIA BORGER (US News & World Report; CBS News Analyst): Is he running
again?

BODE:You know, Tom, I remember back in 1991, around--between Christmas and
New Year's, when I interviewed Bill Clinton and Hillary in their home in
Arkansas--there was some kind of nuclear proliferation s--problem going on at
that time. And I asked Governor Clinton, `What would you do about this?' And
he said, `Buy 'em.' And, you know, I've been wondering all along when are we
going to get around to that?

BODE:Yeah.

BODE:OK, let me go around...

Mr. E.J. DIONNE (The Washington Post): The police don't do that.

Analysis: Highlights of local campaigns from around the country
KEN BODE, host:

Let--let me open this up and ask...

Ms. GLORIA BORGER (US News & World Report; CBS News Analyst): Who'll run it?

BODE:...and ask you folks, who've been covering this election: What will
you remember about this particular election, from the campaign trail? Any
telling incidents and debates or candidates or what have you? Broder?

Mr. DAVID BRODER (The Washington Post): I saw a--a really sensible and
civilized debate between two women in the only race in the country where there
are two women candidates for--for the Senate, in--in the state of Washington,
with Patty Murray, the Democrat, Linda Smith, the Republican. They spent an
hour together and they talked about issues. You don't find very many of the
male candidates doing that.

BODE:Gloria.

Ms. BORGER: Well, I'm a--I want to talk to you about another debate that I
recall between two male candidates in Wisconsin, Russ Feingold, running for
re-election, Mark Neumann, the Republican challenging him. A perfectly
legitimate debate. Young student comes up and asks a question about a
donation from a political action committee to Mr. Neumann, at which point Mr.
Neumann kind of turns to her and says, `Well, I don't know about all my
contributions.' Feingold jumps on him, and then Neumann turns to her and
basically accuses her of being a plant, at which point she starts to cry, and
says, `You want young people to get into politics and...'

BODE:Let's take a look at--let's take a look at this moment that Gloria's
talking about here.

(Excerpt from "We the People of Wisconsin")

Unidentified Woman: I would, out of all due respect, appreciate apology, for
one. But I really--that really offends me, that--I think that we all know
that it's hard for young people to get involved in the political process. And
to do something that would hinder my taking part...

Unidentified Man: First off, I...

Woman: ...is not really fair.

(End of excerpt)

BODE:Two embarrassed white guys at that point...

Ms. BORGER: Bad for...

BODE:...I'll tell you that. Yeah.

Ms. BORGER: Of course, then the journalists all tried to discover if she was
a plant or not.

BODE:I remember a debate in...

Mr. E.J. DIONNE (The Washington Post): Sounds like us.

BODE:...the debate in California between Barbara Boxer and Matt Fong, and
Matt Fong at one point said to Barbara Boxer--they were talking about a flat
tax; perfectly civil discussion about a flat tax. And Matt Fong said, `Even
your House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt has a flat tax.' And Barbara Boxer
reared back and snapped at him, and she said, `You mean Dick Armey has a flat
tax.' And then I realized that Matt Fong knows more about the Democratic
Party than Barbara Boxer, because Dick Gephardt does have a flat tax. E.J.

Mr. DIONNE: Well, I--I al--must be the state of Washington, because I also
saw a good debate. Jay Inslee and Rick White. Jay Inslee was the first
Democrat to run an ad saying, `Let's not impeach the president.'
Interestingly, the impeachment issue didn't come up for more than an hour into
this debate.

But the other thing I saw was the brave new world of turnout politics. I was
in a phone bank, a Bush phone bank down in Ft. Worth, and it was a lot of
nice people, mostly senior citizens, and this lady was sitting next to a
computer and every b--voter had their name--had a--their name on a card with a
bar code. And people were calling to s--no--to determine who was going to
vote the straight ticket. And so they marked everything how people were
voting. This lady took an electronic pencil, ran it over the card. The
information went from Ft. Worth to a computer in Austin, which will generate
about two million names that the Republicans are trying to get to vote early
or turn out on Election Day. So we--we say that politics is sort of all about
professionalism and people aren't involved wi--now we even have turnout
operations on computer.

Analysis: Predictions of voter turnout around the nation
KEN BODE, host:

Let's stick with turnout for just a second, because that's one of the very
basic issues about this election. What do you think? Is the Republican base
energized? Is it going to be a low-turnout election? What's going to happen?

Mr. DAVID BRODER (The Washington Post): I think all the evidence is that
it's going to be a low-turnout election, but it's very questionable at this
point, I think, whether the Republicans are going to get a great advantage of
that. I was told by a Republican pollster this week that the national surveys
now are showing consistently higher level of interest in this election in the
African-American community than among whites.

Mr. E.J. DIONNE (The Washington Post): Yes. Garry Mauro's campaign
manager--he's the guy with the misfortune of running against George W.
Bush--had an interesting theory. He said Republicans and Democrats will do a
fine job turning out their base, but that independent voters are going
to--that turnout among them is going to drop, because this has become such a
partisan election.

Mr. THOMAS FRIEDMAN (The New York Times): This is--this is purely anecdotal,
but my sense was, during the height of impeachment fervor in Congress--I
really had a sense, boy, Democrats were rip-roaring ready to come out. But I
feel the steam has come out of that a little bit.

Ms. GLORIA BORGER (US News & World Report; CBS News Analyst): The--the--the
turnout, usually, for midterm elections, around 39 percent. So it's not
really high to begin with, so we ought to sort of take a look at that when we
see the results.

BODE:Well, you know, two things about turnout. One is that turnout has been
kind of thrown into a cocked hat by the fact that we have now motor-voter
registration where, if you go in and d--get your driver's license, then you
have the option to register and many people do who otherwise wouldn't register
and never will vote. And so, as a percentage of registered voters, it has
dropped, but that's kind of artificial.

The second, again anecdotal: In Illinois, where I live now, there is--there
has been an elimination of straight-ticket voting. It used to be that in
order to vote in Illinois you had to open the ballot--or the--the machine by
voting a straight ticket, and then strike the Democrat and vote for the
Republican. Now you can't do that anymore, and so in Illinois on Tuesday
there are 107 ballot choices for the voters of that state. And if there's
anybody in line behind you, you've got five minutes to do it. My prediction
is it'll be very low turnout there because people are going to get discouraged
by the long lines.

Mr. DIONNE: I don't think the Republicans survived the end of straight-ticket
voting in the city of Chicago. This is one of the great traditions since
(unintelligible) time.

Analysis: Predictions of Election Day results
KEN BODE, host:

All right, what to watch for. Let me ask you folks, what do--are you--are
you--would you tell our viewers, on election night when they're watching
television--what to watch for? Gloria.

Ms. GLORIA BORGER (US News & World Report; CBS News Analyst): Well, I think
the first basic thing is when--o--overall, in a large sense, when you're--when
you're looking at the Senate, see if Republicans pick up five seats. At one
point they were dreaming of doing that. It doesn't look likely that they're
going to do that, because if they would do that, they'd get a filibuster-proof
majority. And another thing to look for in the House is, if--if Newt
Gingrich's Republicans don't do well, and by that I mean if they only pick up
somewhere between five and eight seats, get ready for another coup...

Unidentified Panelist: Yeah.

Ms. BORGER: ...somewhere down the line, with conservative Republicans being
so upset they will try and challenge the leadership of the House.

BODE:Tom Friedman.

Mr. THOMAS FRIEDMAN (The New York Times): Ken, I'm--I'm watching the
Wisconsin campaign, maybe because I'm from Minnesota, but if someone like Russ
Feingold, who is trying to really promote campaign-finance reform and trying
to run, basically, as clean a campaign-financed campaign as one can run, gets
wiped out in Wisconsin, that's really depressing to me. If you can't win that
kind of campaign in Wisconsin, I find that really disappointing.

BODE:E.J.

Mr. E.J. DIONNE (The Washington Post): Well, if--y--we--this brings up the
Mitch McConnell election, the head of the Republican Senate Committee...

BODE:Yeah, that's something. Yeah.

Mr. DIONNE: ...the real foe of campaign reform. He'd really like to knock
out Russ Feingold in his home state. A very interesting race. Scotty
Baesler, a Democrat, has really run on the campaign issue, c--finance issue,
against Jim Bunning, Republican congressman. That's going to be one to watch.
In terms of getting a sense of the trend, there are a couple open seats in
Kentucky, where the polls close early, and that's one place to see if you're
getting anything. Also, the North Carolina race between Senator Faircloth and
Mr. Edwards, a Democrat--if the Democrats pick that one up--you don't want to
extrapolate too much, but that's a sign of a pretty good night, especially if
Schumer also picks up New York.

BODE:He's really covering the waterfront, isn't he, that one?

Mr. DAVID BRODER (The Washington Post): Yeah.

BODE:Your turn.

Ms. BORGER: Is there anything left?

Mr. BRODER: The--the Kentucky Senate race will report early and will give us
an indication, and then right across the river in southern Indiana, there's
the dis--House district that Lee Hamilton has held for the Democrats. Very
competitive race. If the Republicans are going to do any more than what
Gloria suggests will bring on a coup, they ought to pick up that district. So
that's another one to keep an eye on.

BODE:And I--I say look at a--at what you won't find out about for a day or
two afterwards, and that is the state legislative races below the surface of
the iceberg, where there are 99 legislative chambers out there. And there are
36 of them where five seats or less will change the complexion of the
Legislature, all leading toward reapportionment after the year 2000. The
governors in state legislative races could determine the makeup of the House
of Representatives for a long period of time.

Analysis: Effects of this election on the year 2000 presidential
race
KEN BODE, host:

Very quickly, around the table: Now who are you looking at to come out of
this election that might be somebody we need to watch for the year 2000?

Ms. GLORIA BORGER (US News & World Report; CBS News Analyst): I'll go first
'cause it's really easy: George W. Bush, obviously. Take a look at the
margin he wins by. Take a look if he wins in Democratic strongholds, like El
Paso, Texas, and then you'll see Al Gore...

BODE:And if it's big enough to bring a Democratic lieutenant governor in
with him.

Ms. BORGER: That's right. At--right. Exactly. And if his brother wins in
Florida, Al Gore is going to be one scared fellow.

BODE:David.

Mr. DAVID BRODER (The Washington Post): Well, I'm looking at Gloria Borger,
and I think she's got a great political future. And the way the candidates on
the ballots have been trashing each other, she may be the only one who could be elected to anything in 2000.

BODE:Well, we just went through an adventure in frivolity around here.

Ms. BORGER: Right. Yeah.

BODE:Tom Friedman--Tom Friedman.

Mr. THOMAS FRIEDMAN (The New York Times): Ken, I'm looking at the elections in Russia and Brazil, basically. Will the reformers there, people committed to global economic reform, be re-elected there and sustain themselves, or will they be ousted and will this Congress have to deal with a very much more hostile world out there?

Mr. E.J. DIONNE (The Washington Post): I'd look to Republican governors, generally led by Bush, but also Pataki and a number of others who are going to assert themselves in the party, and watch Newt Gingrich and Dick Gephardt. If the Democrats don't take the majority this time, I think that's more pressure--going to be kind of personal pressure on Gephardt to run for president. And Newt Gingrich's fate--if the Republicans don't do well, I think there's going to be some more rumbling against him after this election.

BODE:And I'm going to be parochial and go back to the Midwest and say, watch Evan Bayh...

Mr. DIONNE: Yes.

BODE:..who's going to have a swamp of a victory, not maybe as big as George W. Bush, but here's a guy running in the most conservative Republican state in the Midwest. He's running ads with a slogan: `Send a bipartisan conservative to the United States Senate'...

Ms. BORGER: Oh.

BODE:...surrounded by, you know, Republican governors and senators out there. I think that he is a possibility for the Democratic ticket.

Mr. DIONNE: And he's running against one of the most liberal Republicans in the country, Paul Helmke. And I thought Helmke's only strategy was to run to the left of Bayh, and that wouldn't work in Indiana.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Sign-off: Washington Week in Review
KEN BODE, host:

All right. Thanks to the panel for watching--thanks to you for being here--and thanks to you for watching. We'll see you next week on WASHINGTON WEEK when we try to figure out what happened on Election Day and what a status-quo election really is. Good night.