Brooks and Meyerson

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• JIM LEHRER:

  Finally tonight, Brooks and Meyerson: New York Times columnist David Brooks, and Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson. He's also editor at large at American Prospect and political editor of the LA Weekly. Mark Shields is off tonight.

  David, Pope John Paul II. First time in history a U.S. president has attended a funeral for a pope. First time flags were flown at half mast in the United States. Any meaning here at all?

• DAVID BROOKS:

  There are two things. First, he wasn't only the head of the Catholic church, he was a world historical figure.

  I'd say in the '80s there were five world historical figures, people who really moved history: The pope, Solzhenitsyn, Mandela, Reagan, and Thatcher. So he sort of extended beyond simply the church.

  The second thing I'd say that the Catholic church and public relations toward the Catholic church have become a lot less fraught in this country over the past 30 years. It was a non-issue essentially when John Kerry ran for president, unlike 1960.

  And I think one of the great civil rights triumphs of America in our lifetimes really is the diminution, though not elimination, but the diminution in anti-Catholic prejudice. It's become more acceptable for people.

• JIM LEHRER:

  What's your reading, Harold?

• HAROLD MEYERSON:

  We've in essence replaced the old rift between Protestants and Catholics, which was a huge source of —

• JIM LEHRER:

  It used to be a very big thing.

• HAROLD MEYERSON:

  This was a major source of political tension in this country in the last part of the 19th and the first part of the 20th century. That's been replaced now by a tension between the more religiously observant and the more non-religiously secular.

  And the pope had become kind of a unifying figure for the more religiously observant, which is very much —

• JIM LEHRER:

  No matter what your own personal religious belief was.

• HAROLD MEYERSON:

  Exactly. There's a kind of new dividing line, which isn't Protestant/Catholic but more observant secular and this Republican coalition that George W. Bush heads is very invested in the growth, the care, and the feeding of this observant coalition. It's a very important part of the Republican coalition.

• JIM LEHRER:

  Does that make sense to you?

• DAVID BROOKS:

  Absolutely. I wouldn't say it needs the Bush administration, it is sort of spontaneous.

  And I would say one of the groups that was most instrumental in lessening anti-Catholic attitudes were southern evangelicals in the '50s and '60s who recognized the things they had in common with these people and took away – really this was the core of anti-Catholic feeling and they said, no, "let's reach out to these people."

  And if you talk to evangelical Protestants or observant Catholics about Veritatis Splendor, one of the encyclicals of the pope where he talks about freedom, really means obedience to God's word, that's something they both can agree on.

  So the encyclicals which the pope issued were things that ideologically, intellectually unified this coalition Harold's talking about.

• JIM LEHRER:

  Do you agree with David, Harold, that it also had a lot to do with this particular human being, Pope John Paul II?

• HAROLD MEYERSON:

  Sure it did. I mean, it will be an interesting test to see the level of governmental support, let us say, turning out for the funeral of Nelson Mandela, one of your other five figures, who is not part of this political coalition that the pope came to symbolize and that the Republicans are, I think, exploiting very well.

  But of course it is. And of course he also symbolized things pretty much to everybody across the spectrum. There was something there that anyone in any part of the spectrum could identify with, with the pope.

  On the drive over today, I passed a Federal Reserve Bank, saw the flag at half-staff and it occurred to me that the pope's economics were a good deal more humane than Alan Greenspan's.

  So for my point of view I appreciated that. But that's not why the flag was at half-staff. It was other reasons than that.

• JIM LEHRER:

  OK. New issue, new person: Tom DeLay His situation continues to grow. What direction is it growing, do you think?

• HAROLD MEYERSON:

  Well, this was the week that Tom DeLay's ethics ceased to be a story and became a beat. That's a bad thing for a politician.

• JIM LEHRER:

  Beat as in a news beat?

• HAROLD MEYERSON:

  Yes. Yes. This is the story that keeps springing out in many different directions and this was clear on the same day when both The New York Times and Washington Post had front-page stories about unrelated ethical issues that had arisen about DeLay's career.

  In one case having his wife and daughter on his political action committee's payroll, in another case a trip DeLay had taken to Russia which apparently very circuitously, was paid by a Russian oil and gas company with close ties to the Russian Defense Ministry.

  There's just so many things coming out about DeLay right now. And his own method of counterattacking, which is to raise the whole issue of, "Are judges sufficiently answerable to Congress and the public wheel," is just inflaming matters more.

• JIM LEHRER:

  You have been staying in contact with Republicans on this, David. What are they telling you?

• DAVID BROOKS:

  Well, first a number of them who normally say everything to me are saying even privately "I just don't want to talk about this," because they are running.

• JIM LEHRER:

  They're just praying it's going to go away?

• DAVID BROOKS:

  Right. And the ones who are talking very candidly to me off the record are saying there's been a deterioration, that there was a meeting where people rallied around DeLay and a number of people did speak up in his defense, there were about 20 people really clapping vociferously, a lot of people sitting on their hands and a lot more people who just didn't go to the meeting.

  And so it's not the scandals. It's not Post and the Times stories. That was DeLay's best day of the week because when House Republicans see stories in the Post and in my paper, they think, "Oh, it's the liberal press attacking us, well, let's rally around this guy."

  So it's not the scandals, it's the anxiety about the guy. It's why, you know, he knows he's under the microscope, why is he always under the ethical edge and then when he's under scrutiny, as Harold says, why is he lashing out at an institution, the judges?

  You know, he's always on the aggressiveness. And so they're afraid this anxiety that he creates around him will become a political liability. It's not the scandal, it's the politics.

• JIM LEHRER:

  I was struck by a statement in a speech that Justice Sandra Day O'Connor made yesterday asking the politicians to cool the rhetoric, the anti-judge rhetoric because of the recent attacks on the Judiciary and whatever. Is she talking to Tom DeLay?

• HAROLD MEYERSON:

  She sure is and so was Chief Justice Rehnquist sometime ago when he said, "You cannot impeach a judge for delivering a decision, an opinion."

  You know, it's one thing, in the old days the American right went after liberal judges, "impeach Earl Warren," said the billboards.

  Right now seven of the nine Supreme Court Justices were appointed by Republican presidents and a majority of the 266 appellate judges were appointed by Republican presidents.

  I mean, what is this institution that Tom DeLay is lashing back at? This is not a liberal institution. And there's a lot of moderate Republican dismay registered in the polling about attacks on an independent judiciary.

• JIM LEHRER:

  Where do you think it's coming from? Is it coming from the Schiavo — if the pope had not died, somebody said to this to me today – just think what we had been talking about for the last ten days if the pope had not died – we'd still be talking about Schiavo and all of the ramifications. DeLay is still talking about Schiavo?

• DAVID BROOKS:

  Right. We'd be talking about Saul Bellow.

• JIM LEHRER:

  Right.

• DAVID BROOKS:

  I guess I'd say there's an emerging difference between what you'd call the ideological conservatives who really do want to change a lot of things and within the Republican Party the temperamental conservatives who are a little nervous about the "take no prisoners" tactics, who are a little nervous about the attack on the Judiciary, who are a little nervous frankly about Social Security reform, which seems sort of a new thing.

  And so one of the things you're seeing within the Republican Party is the fracturing between the "let's change everything" types and the "hey, I'm a conservative temperamentally, which means I'm cautious and I want order." And there's a little nervousness among those temperamental conservatives.

• JIM LEHRER:

  Those are the people who have a serious problem with, a serious problem with Tom DeLay?

• DAVID BROOKS:

  They have a problem with DeLay; they have a problem with the nuclear option on the judicial nominations; they have a problem with Social Security; they have a problem with the whole aggressive mode of where things are going.

  A third of Republicans opposed the personal accounts in Social Security. These are cautious Republicans.

• JIM LEHRER:

  New subject and finally, Harold, the coming of a new government in Iraq. What does that mean for this whole thing that got us where we are in Iraq?

• HAROLD MEYERSON:

  Well, it is something that I think people across a number of political tendencies should certainly welcome. You want there to be some result at the end of the day that is better than what was there and this certainly moves in that direction.

  It's not at all clear if a democratic government that can keep a unified country is going to emerge there. They still have to write a constitution, there are all kinds of issues there with minority rights and majority rule that will be difficult to iron out.

  And there are any number of nations over the last 20 years, the former Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, that as democracy became part of the political landscape, actually fractured upon ethnic lines, which may yet happen to Iraq. It's a little early in the game to make a final prediction there.

• JIM LEHRER:

  What is your prediction? Final or otherwise?

• DAVID BROOKS:

  I'm a little dubious of that. We've been told about the fracturing of Iraq, and there hasn't been any really sign of that; on the contrary.

  And when our reporters are always asking people, "Are you Shia, Sunni, or Kurd," the answer they get back is, "why are you asking me that question, I'm an Iraqi." There seems to be a lot of national cohesion to that. And the other thing you have to say is this is another step of Iraqis taking responsibility for their own country.

  And that's important at the government level; it's also important at the personal level. And I've been struck by changes in after a terrorist attack at Hillah a couple weeks ago, Iraqis spontaneously protesting the attack; Iraqis spontaneously coming up against the insurgents and fighting back.

  And that's part of the process of taking responsibility for your own country and not thinking, which obviously didn't happen and couldn't happen, was that the U.S. could do this thing for them.

• JIM LEHRER:

  So, this is optimistic, an optimistic development that makes you even more optimistic?

• DAVID BROOKS:

  One's optimism is always tempered. I sometimes think with all the great things happening around the Middle East that Iraq policy will succeed everywhere but Iraq. So you have to be a little pessimistic, given the level of violence. Nonetheless, as we move, the formation of a government is a good thing.

• JIM LEHRER:

  Of course, you were opposed to the war; you were opposed to military option.

• HAROLD MEYERSON:

  Absolutely.

• JIM LEHRER:

  Can you put that aside now and look at what's happening now as a good thing?

• HAROLD MEYERSON:

  Yes. What's happening now is a good thing. But then I have to look at the other consequences of our intervention, America's standing in the rest of the world, the fact that George W. Bush was booed by people attending the pope's funeral today when they saw him on television.

  And this is not a radical crowd. These were people out for the pope's funeral. There are all kinds of positive and negative consequences to what George W. Bush did.

  I can oppose what he did and nonetheless see that there could be some very positive consequences among many at the end of the day.

• JIM LEHRER:

  And the formation of the government this week was one of them?

• HAROLD MEYERSON:

  It is so far as it goes. And I said, we'll see where this goes at the end of the line but right now, yes.

• JIM LEHRER:

  OK. Thank you, gentlemen. Harold, good to see you again.

• HAROLD MEYERSON:

  Thank you Jim.