Mark Shields and David Brooks Discuss the Week’s News

JIM LEHRER:

Finally tonight, the analysis of Shields and Brooks: Syndicated columnist Mark Shields, and New York Times columnist David Brooks.

Welcome back, David.

DAVID BROOKS:

Thank you.

JIM LEHRER:

First, quickly on the demonstrations the conventional wisdom is if these demonstrations, these protests do get out of hand, it will work against Kerry because these people are all seen as Democrats, et cetera. Do you agree with that?

DAVID BROOKS:

I do agree with that. I think there's some value in stability, and I think the Kerry people agree with that; I think the Kerry people have been pretty aggressive in trying to urge people to remain calm, not get out of control.

There's a sense the country is getting too partisan, too polarized, people getting on the right or the left…

JIM LEHRER:

What do you think about that, Mark?

MARK SHIELDS:

Jim, I don't argue with David's point. I'd simply add that if it's seen as a convention that for own any reason comes out of control, where the president is only going to be here one day, and is seen as almost keeping out of New York, then that doesn't men his case that he is a successful and prudent steward of the nation – that he's a uniter rather than a divider.

JIM LEHRER:

I see. Okay. Mark, again with you, we sought here on Friday night before the Democratic Convention in Boston, the question that I threw at both of you was: okay, in that case what was the mission of John Kerry.

What is the mission of George W. Bush this week at this convention?

MARK SHIELDS:

Well, Jim, if in fact John Kerry had to fill in the blanks in his biography at Boston, which I think was certainly one of his tasks, George Bush has to fill in the blanks of what his second term would be like because the problem he faces is the country wants change. And they're quite dissatisfied with his leadership, Republicans quite frankly are up because the latest polls show them with a lead, a small statistical lead, that gives them an emotional lift.

But the reality is, Jim, that if you look behind at the 20 percent of the voters who are either undecided or open to change, are really down in the president's handling of the economy, of jobs, of health care, of Iraq. They think the country is headed overwhelmingly in the wrong direction. So what George Bush has to do is something like his dad did in 1988 to prove he's the agent of change, that things are going to be better and different in the next administration than they are now or have been.

JIM LEHRER:

David do you agree that he's got to be an agent of change?

DAVID BROOKS:

Yes. I disagree with Mark's analysis of the current situation, but completely agree with his prescription.

MARK SHIELDS:

That's good.

DAVID BROOKS:

So that's halfway. What we've got now from the Bush second term is a bunch of really small ideas which have been labeled the ownership society. And the question is whether there is some bigger fiber behind that; what John Kerry did not do in his convention was have any sort of concrete plans that he was going to lay out, but he at least has them on the Web site. George Bush doesn't even have them on the Web site.

So I've been calling around saying what's out there. What are they going to propose – something big and bold — and I've heard about some pretty big and bold proposals about tax reform and things like that – maybe even calling for some move to a consumption tax, some tax simplification; there's some health care reform ideas that are floating around there that Bill Frist has been pushing, so there are big things out there. I'm not sure they have totally decided on them, however.

They may decide to go with something modest and maybe have a big name for it like the Ownership Society or Revamped Compassionate Conservatism. But I do agree with Mark about this. They have to give some people an idea that the country is going to be moving forward– that there's something really bold and exciting that will dominate the agenda for the next 60 days.

JIM LEHRER:

But you disagree with Mark's diagnosis as to why he needs to do this?

DAVID BROOKS:

I go back – to who's going to win this election – but there's no question that over the last three weeks, that the president has bumped up five or six points in the polls, but basically I think you asked for the job approval number.

Do you think George Bush is doing a good job which I think is an important number, I think it's about 50 percent now which is about the cusp of where you need to be. So I don't think the president is in desperate straits by any means.

JIM LEHRER:

Speaking of number there's were some new ones yesterday from the Census Bureau, the number of Americans into poverty and number of Americans without health insurance; both of those figures have gone up steadily over the last three years.

Do those kind of numbers hurt the president, by themselves, or does John Kerry have to leap on them in some way and make them work for him?

MARK SHIELDS:

I think he has to leap on them, Jim, but I think there's no question that they hurt the president. When you've got 5.2 million people without health insurance who had it when the George Bush became president, when you have 4.3 million Americans, slipping into poverty – when you've got the median income in the country dropping by $1500, those are tough real facts. And the difference between John Kerry on health care and John Kerry on Iraq, on Iraq John Kerry doesn't have a specific plan.

On health care he does, to cover people, and the independent study at Emory University shows it would cover 27 million people.

JIM LEHRER:

Out of the 44; there are 44 million —

MARK SHIELDS:

That's right.

JIM LEHRER:

— who don't have it.

MARK SHIELDS:

Under the president's proposal, which David had mentioned, as a part of his ownership society, I think 1.8 million would be covered out of the 45 million.

So I think it's a real problem, it's been helped quite frankly as all the bad news has, and the president has had a lot of it lately, just by the fact that the preoccupation with the swift boat controversy.

JIM LEHRER:

We'll get to that. Let me ask —

MARK SHIELDS:

I think it's an opportunity.

JIM LEHRER:

Okay. How does the president handle this kind of — he was very positive today – we had it in the News Summary, David – about – that his policies have spurred the recovery.

He did not speak about these numbers. How does he handle that?

DAVID BROOKS:

I think that's why he has to have an agenda, he can say we created 1.5 million jobs or whatever, but we've got two issues here with the poverty. The first is just the cyclical downturn. When you get a recession, you're going to have an uptick in poverty. But then there's a longer problem, which he talked about pretty well in 2000 but hasn't talked about so much since, which is that you have this – you don't want it an under class but a significant group of people who are not sharing in the wealth.

You have a significant group of people since welfare reform who have jobs but who are not rising out of poverty. Welfare reform has worked to get them on the work roll, has not worked to get them rising above poverty. So there has to be a next step to welfare reform to make that sort of improvement. And what the president has to lay out, I think, not politically, I don't think this will be a big political issue, but just for the good of the country, is some set of wage supplements, some set of ideas that will get these people actually out of poverty.

And that's why he really needs to get really fiber like, the way the consultants hate, because I think everybody is bored with policy, so I think in this particular case, the people who decide on values have already decided. You've got to give them concrete fiber, I'm going to solve this problem with this plan.

JIM LEHRER:

Why is that not good politics?

DAVID BROOKS:

Because the consultants will tell you, what consultants do, they have focus groups and what they love to focus group is values, do you like patriotism, do you like optimism and then the people say yeah, I like optimism and the consultants say we did a study, people really liked optimism, they really like patriotism; talk about that.

But that's nothing. That doesn't last.

JIM LEHRER:

Do you agree with that, Mark, that this may be good for the country but it may not be good for politics for either one of these candidates?

MARK SHIELDS:

I don't think there's any question that we tried to do welfare reform in the country on the cheap. And the irony of course is that the one governor who really led the nation on it was Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin as the chairman of Health and Human Services who proved in Wisconsin that you had to provide people with health coverage under Medicaid; you had to provide them with transportation, with job training, you had to provide them with babysitting coverage.

They were willing to spend, he was as governor of Wisconsin — the president quite frankly hasn't been. But I think it's a deeper problem than David put his finger on. George W. Bush has real problems with target constituencies. I mean,. I've talked to a dozen Republicans, analysts, pros, who all say the same thing, it's Republicans women with children.

And they are disillusioned or disenchanted with George Bush on education, they don't feel that George Bush has spoken in policy, call it an ownership society which means little, nothing to these folks – that George Bush is speaking to them about jobs and health care, and I think that really needs, he needs some meat on the bones if he's going to reach out to that constituency again.

JIM LEHRER:

Mark, another issue. The Abu Ghraib Prison abuse reports this week, John Kerry immediately called for the resignation of Don Rumsfeld. What do you think about that?

MARK SHIELDS:

Well, it's fine to call for Don Rumsfeld's resignation, and certainly the army report Gen. Kern, who reported on the broadcast, I mean was very, very serious stuff, Jim. Gen. Kern came out and called it torture.

And it is behavior that studied that stains and dishonors not only the United States but the United States Army, and it just is really amazing that an administration that takes such great pride in toppling a brutal dictator was so indifferent in its own procedures of interrogation that it allowed this abuse and torture to develop under its nose, and we find out it isn't just a few rotten apples, that seven times as many people who have even been charged already.

JIM LEHRER:

How do you read it, David?

DAVID BROOKS:

Well, the commission said that Donald Rumsfeld should not resign. The commission — so John Kerry is sort of misinterpreting the commission report. What the commission I think did is it made two levels, first there was a level of inattention — when you talk about Donald Rumsfeld and the top echelon of the Pentagon, there were not enough people after the war, there was a lack of adaptability after it became clear there was going to be this insurgent war.

There was a lack of attention of but that is not torturing people, that is not the worst crimes. When you look at the worst crimes and the photos we all saw, those were freelance activities that happened in the middle of the night, they were failures at the military level but did not rise above.

So I think what you see is a problem which was localized which was not about interrogations, which was a problem which should be punished with criminal activity, but was not a problem as Jack Reed, as Ted Kennedy and so many Democrats charge that went straight up to the Pentagon brass.

There were a lot of reckless and really smear charges made in the height of the Abu Ghraib because the passions were so high, and this commission placed some blame around, up and down the chain of command, but did nothing to back up some of the reckless charges that were made at the time.

JIM LEHRER:

Mark?

MARK SHIELDS:

I don't know how the reckless charges, Jim, David can call them that when the commission itself – and I'm talking about the army — the army commission was a lot tougher, let's be quite frank about it, as opposed to the one the defense did.

With all respect to Jim Schlesinger and Tillie Fowler and the others, the army really said this is responsibility. Gen. Sanchez, a three-star general, is accountable and responsible here. I mean, they didn't spare any feelings, Jim, and they really did look at responsibility and accountability. I thought this was an accountability administration.

JIM LEHRER:

David?

DAVID BROOKS:

Well, Gen. Sanchez has paid the price, he's been replaced and I think a lot of people have been replaced. There will be criminal charges, the whole country has been hurt by this. But some of the charges that came out and this again, it goes back to the swift boats, it goes back to the 527s, there's been a climate of just recklessness.

And there seems to be no accountability to the people who are reckless. One of the things the commission reported was talk about the International Administration of the Red Cross. And the commission rebuked the Red Cross for getting out of control. And so we've got two issues here — the one issue which I think they — some people were guilty of terrible mismanagement and that does go right to Donald Rumsfeld.

But there's another charge, which has to do with our political climate, and that's the culture of reckless charges that go on and the commission, as the 9/11 Commission did, has got us back to the facts in contradiction to a lot of the political statements that happened at the time.

JIM LEHRER:

And the swift boats, where does that issue stand tonight, Mark? It's been alive now for two or three weeks. The Los Angeles Times poll and others said recently it indicated has hurt John Kerry. How do you read it tonight?

MARK SHIELDS:

Well, Jim, for two weeks, in two weeks of really bad news for the president, especially on the economy, especially on jobs, especially on the distribution of the burden and benefits of the tax cuts, this has been the dominant story. And the president has taken a rather intriguing position.

He said he thinks that John Kerry served honorably and well and should be provided of it, that he didn't lie about his record, that therefore he's not going to criticize the ads, which accuse John Kerry of lying about his record. And now having run out the string, he's now wants to start a law case, initiate a legal case to outlaw 527s, which is interesting because it's going to take a little while because his own lawyer of course resigned this week, because he was involved in the swift boats 527s, so he's got to replace him.

But I think it's worked, there's no question, it's put Kerry on the defensive, it's preoccupied the press, and at a time of bad news, it gave the president a very nice breather.

JIM LEHRER:

How do you read it, David?

DAVID BROOKS:

I think just politically it hurt, I mean, there no question that John Kerry has suffered, but I think it's hurt John Kerry more than the 65 million moveon.org and all the rest against Bush, because Kerry is still vulnerable on one key issue, which is, is he a flip flopper, does he talk out of both sides of his mouth, will he say anything?

So I think the swift boat controversy hurt him in particular because it came in a month where he couldn't seem to decide whether he would have gone to war in Iraq or would he not. Would he disapprove of the war now knowing what he did in Iraq, so I think it was the context of Kerry's sort of substantiability on Iraq and a whole host of other issues which created the swift boat controversy.

It's supposed to be evident, most people having taken a look at it, 64 swift boat guys have a view, but people like you say there's really nothing that convicts John Kerry here. But you do wonder about Kerry's credibility, that's the thing that's really at issue here.

JIM LEHRER:

So we will continue this conversation next week about this and other subjects in New York. See you both then, thank you very much.