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CNN Talkback Live

What Grade Does President Bush Deserve for His First 100 Days?

Aired April 30, 2001 - 15:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: ... president of the United States...

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BUSH: This is my actual first-grade report card.

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BOBBIE BATTISTA, HOST: Lots of A's there, but how's President Bush doing after his first 100 days in the White House?

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think he's actually doing quite well.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He's not as impressive as some of the other presidents have been.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: ... to see what happens in 100 days, that's ridiculous to judge somebody.

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SEN. JOSEPH LIEBERMAN (D), CONNECTICUT: I'd give the president an incomplete on his first 100 days.

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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: In 100 days, he's had remarkable success.

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BATTISTA: Mocking the 100-day pressure, Mr. Bush lampooned the issues at the White House Correspondents Dinner.

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BUSH: In my family, with all those kids in the tub, it's not arsenic in the water I'd be worried about.

(LAUGHTER)

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BUSH: I'm the one who committed the state of Texas to defend Taiwan from attack.

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BUSH: ... built it myself...

(LAUGHTER)

... and it's still meeting our energy needs.

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BATTISTA: How much is the president expected to accomplish in 100 days?

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BUSH: But my advice is, don't peak too early.

(LAUGHTER)

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BATTISTA: Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to TALKBACK LIVE.

Everywhere you look these days, someone is talking about President Bush's first 100 days. What is so magical about that number and just how much is anyone expected to accomplish in that amount of time?

Our guests today are four of the "TAKE Five" crew: Michelle Cottle, senior political editor at "The New Republic"; Robert George, associate editorial page editor of "The New York Post"; Jake Tapper, Washington correspondent for Salon.com and author of "Down and Dirty: The Plot to Steal the Presidency." And do you keep a lot of those books around that setup there, I was just wondering, Jake?

JAKE TAPPER, SALON.COM: Lots.

BATTISTA: A lot of copies -- a lot of copies of that book, right?

TAPPER: Well, they keep being taken. People want to read it.

(LAUGHTER)

BATTISTA: And also with us, Chris Caldwell, senior writer at "The Weekly Standard."

Good to see all of you.

All right, realistically speaking, that number, 100, 100 days is a little bit arbitrary and pointless, don't you think? Because I mean, you know, you can probably go in and set some sort of tone, but history over time has proved us wrong more times than not about any sort of definitive analyses of presidencies. Would you agree, Chris?

CHRIS CALDWELL, "THE WEEKLY STANDARD": Yeah, that's right. The 100 days is something that was invented to describe FDR's program to get us out of the Great Depression, and ever since then, politicians -- mostly of a liberal, progressive, government-friendly stripe -- have used it to judge new presidents. But it's not very appropriate to George Bush, and he's even repudiated the notion of it. So...

BATTISTA: Jake?

TAPPER: Well, he repudiated it until he realized that there was nothing he could do about it. All these shows were going to have specials and we were going to talk about it, so then they started embracing it, and coming out with report cards and press briefings, et cetera.

I think he's done an OK job. Certainly, every time he talks about foreign policy I cringe in terror, but generally, on everything within the confines of the continental United States I feel he's doing all right.

BATTISTA: Yeah...

ROBERT GEORGE, "NEW YORK POST": But...

(CROSSTALK)

BATTISTA: ... I didn't say we weren't going to talk about it. I said it was pointless.

Go ahead, Robert.

GEORGE: But strangely enough, when Jake says something, many of us cringe in terror. So...

(LAUGHTER) ... I think it's a -- I think it's a good balance.

I mean, I think -- I think he's done a very good job and in the sense of actually setting a tone. When you think that Bush campaigned on changing the tone in Washington and so forth, I think he's done -- I think he's done quite well.

In a sense, we've gone -- we've gotten a to like a return to normalcy from the "Perils of Pauline" presidency of Bill Clinton's. So I think in that sense, in that sense I think he's done very, very well.

BATTISTA: Michelle, what do you think?

MICHELLE COTTLE, "THE NEW REPUBLIC": Yeah. Well, in many ways there just is no tone. I mean, he's lying solo and everybody's talking about how this is the CEO presidency, which translated means he's just trying to stay out of the way most of the time. So there's not really any tone there.

GEORGE: Oh, Michelle, Michelle, come on.

COTTLE: Robert.

GEORGE: Now how many -- how many CEOs would be happy to hear you say that their main job is just staying out of the way? I think -- I think he's doing a little bit better than that.

COTTLE: I don't know.

BATTISTA: Let's talk -- you guys, let's talk about -- Let's get more specific and talk about some hits or misses. Jake, a few moments ago, you mentioned, you know, you quake every time foreign policy comes up. Would that be a miss?

TAPPER: Well, look, I mean, I guess we're all happy -- I'm sure we're all happy that our 24 servicemen and women are brought back from Hainan Island. But there have been two times that President Bush has talked about foreign policy where clearly he hadn't been briefed properly, to put it nicely. One on North Korea, when he referred to agreements that the North Koreans weren't abiding by, and a senior administration official had to come out and say, yes, it's really only one agreement, and yes, there's no evidence that they're not abiding by it, but the president was talking in the future, possibly, about future, that's how the president talks. So, that was one interesting episode.

And then last week, of course, he basically committed the United States to being on the side of Taiwan in the inevitable case of a nuclear war with China, which was, I thought, a little much.

And the problem is nobody's sitting him down and saying: Look, it's a complex relationship. If you're ever asked would you go to war on behalf of Taiwan, you're supposed to fudge it. And -- or they told him and he didn't listen. But either way, yeah, that's an area of concern. BATTISTA: Robert, sometimes I guess it depends on your perspective whether the glass if half-full or half-empty, because people would look at the fact that those servicemen came back unarmed and approach it from that perspective.

GEORGE: Well, yeah, exactly.

Well, I mean, I think it's always -- I think it's always kind of funny when a -- when a politician actually sort of says, you know, what he really thinks, like I think Bush did on -- Bush did on Taiwan and didn't -- and didn't fudge the issue. Maybe he is changing -- maybe he is changing the rules a little bit, but I don't think that's necessarily a reason to -- necessarily a reason to criticize him on it either. And besides, I don't think that it was -- I don't think that it was exactly the context of a nuclear war over Taiwan, the way Jake described it there.

TAPPER: Well, he said whatever it took. That's what he said, whatever it took.

COTTLE: And Robert, but you may not think it's necessarily a problem when he does something like that, but his staff clearly did, because they came out in full-blown spin mode. They're like, oh, he didn't really mean to make news, he didn't really mean to say that. And then they came back and say, oh, yes, and he meant to say exactly that.

So, you know, he's going to have to -- he's going to have to check in at home before he does something like that again.

BATTISTA: Chris, foreign policy, grade?

CALDWELL: Well, I'd give him a -- a B on foreign policy. I think he had to do a great deal of euphemizing on China. I think we're all happy that the situation didn't escalate. But his great challenge is going to be on missile defense, which is something he feels quite strongly about and which he's going to have to do a lot of diplomacy with our allies and a lot of coalition-building in both houses to get passed.

BATTISTA: Well, you know, speaking of that, let me go to the audience quickly, because Ben and Leslie are visiting from England, and so we felt we'd ask them how the president is being perceived overseas at this point.

BEN: It's difficult to comment. I think 100 days is probably a little bit early to make any definitive comment. I think the European perspective is probably that we're concerned about the economic and environmental side that's as yet to be unresolved. The Kyoto agreement seems to be well up in the air, and we're unsettled, uncertain about that.

BATTISTA: Thank you, Ben. Let's move into that environmental area. That seems to be somewhat of a public relations nightmare for the president, if nothing else.

Jake or Michelle, go ahead.

COTTLE: Although it's not really necessarily as bad as people have been pitching it. I mean, a lot of what he did was in response Clinton's kind of doing all of this stuff in the 11th hour, and Kyoto, Clinton was going nowhere on. The whole arsenic thing, it was portrayed as though Bush is trying to up the levels of arsenic in our water. This is not true. I mean, this is a bunch of hysteria on that. And as long as reducing the lawsuits to get endangered species on the list, this is something that Clinton was going to do anyway.

I mean, in some ways, Bush has been horrible, but in others, it's a little bit of hysteria on the part of the media.

GEORGE: Well, you know, amazingly, I agree with everything that Michelle -- Michelle just said there. In fact -- in fact, to give Michelle's magazine a plug, there's a great article that talks about this by Greg Easterbrook that says that basically what Michelle said: that Bush has gotten a real raw deal on the environment, and basically the media has sort of, you know, bought into the environmental activists' line that he's awful on it where he's basically pretty much actually following Clinton's environmental policy, which actually should make certain conservatives a little bit more worried than they actually are now.

TAPPER: Well, hold on one second. There is an issue here. He did completely reverse himself on carbon dioxide emissions. He said he would -- during the campaign, he pledged to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, and then he got elected and he said, never mind. And that's a complete flip-flop.

I don't think the media beat him up enough over that one, so maybe your point and Michelle's point about the Clinton executives orders, maybe they went a little hairy on that one because they didn't hit the first one hard enough.

GEORGE: Well, Jake, I would agree with you that it was a flip- flop, but I would only just say he probably shouldn't have made that promise in the first place.

TAPPER: I love it when conservatives make that argument.

(LAUGHTER)

What does that mean? What? He shouldn't have the promise in the first place. What? His fingers were crossed? I mean, he made the promise, then he broke it.

GEORGE: Well, no, no...

BATTISTA: Well, why, you guys -- why...

CALDWELL: But Robert is just saying that on the merits it's a good position to take, that CO2, it's very expensive to rejigger these plants for this stuff. And yes, he did lie about his campaign promise, but we should be happy on it on the merits of the issue.

(LAUGHTER)

GEORGE: No, he didn't lie. He just changed his mind. There's a difference.

CALDWELL: OK, all right. OK, all right.

BATTISTA: You know, it sounds like for the most part you guys are blaming the media, but at the same time, why do you suppose Americans are a bit nervous about the president's environmental policies, because Americans in general are very protective, I think, of their environment?

CALDWELL: They're not as nervous -- they're not as nervous as they sound, Bobbie. I think that Michelle's point is right. This -- a lot of this was jiggered up by environmental groups, and it's much more of a public relations phenomenon than any grassroots groundswell.

GEORGE: And you know, I will go -- go so far as to say I think that the administration could have done a lot better in explaining their positions than they have. I mean, there has been sort of like this, you know, this public Shakespearian drama between George Bush and Christie Todd Whitman that looks kind of unseemly. And I think that -- that helps buy into the perception that -- that, you know, that they're not -- they're not right on the issue or they're nervous on the issue.

COTTLE: And I do think it's been a learning situation for Bush. I mean, he came in and he thought nobody really cares about this. He's surrounded by oil men. He comes from Texas. He got in and he did a few things that the public and the press freaked out about. And suddenly, he's like, oh, my gosh, people are paying attention, and he kind of started backpedaling. And at this point, he's almost balanced out some of the earlier, horrible things.

TAPPER: But let's also -- let's also be perfectly honest about his position. When it comes down to the environment versus business debate, Bush is clearly 100 percent on the side of bushiness. That's just how he's been in Texas and that's how he'll be as president.

I think that there was some finessing of the arsenic in the water standard and things along those lines. But no, he's not an environmentalist and he never will be.

BATTISTA: I've got to take a break, you guys. We'll talk more about the media when we come back. And you can grade the president by taking the TALKBACK LIVE online viewer vote at cnn.com/talkback. AOL keyword: CNN. And while you're there, check out my daily note and drop us an e-mail if you can. We'll read some e-mails when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BUSH: ... if the vote recount left any hard feelings between my brother Jeb and me. Not a bit. In fact, here's a picture of the governor of Florida.

(LAUGHTER)

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BATTISTA: Fine -- he does that to his brother. Right (UNINTELLIGIBLE) a picture of him there.

E-mails. Dorothy in Kenosha, Wisconsin says: "How can anyone give Bush anything better than an F? The White House personnel are doing all the work. He does not have a mind of his own."

Annette in Dallas, Texas: "One promise that he has kept is that he's proved to be a compassionate conservative. He is compassionate to his wealth contributors and buddies, and he is conservative with the needs and issues of the not-so-wealthy."

Is the president getting an easy ride from the media? No way says a study that was conducted by the Project for Excellence in Journalism. According to this study of news coverage, both President Bush and former President Clinton were hit with roughly an equal number of negative stories in the first 100 days. And Bill Clinton actually enjoyed more positive coverage, 28 percent, to Mr. Bush's 22 percent.

Does that surprise any of you, guys? Do you think the coverage has been pretty fair for the most part, or is he getting a ride on things?

CALDWELL: Well, I thought that we were the project for Excellence in Media.

(LAUGHTER)

But -- but -- but there's a -- there's a distinction that should probably be drawn between the Clinton coverage and the Bush coverage. As I recall the first days of the Clinton administration, a lot of the -- both the negativity and the puff pieces came from generational matters, and -- and brouhaha pieces, like about gays in the military. Here's our president, who's a draft dodger. Here's our president, who admitted to smoking pot, or sort of admitted to smoking pot.

But -- but today's Bush pieces are much more issue-oriented. So I think that politically you can say the press is being a bit harsher on him, but I think he falls roughly in the middle.

GEORGE: Well, actually, I might -- I might slightly -- I might slightly disagree with Chris on that. My memory of the -- of the early Clinton years was that it was sort of the gang that -- the gang that couldn't shoot straight. He stumbled on -- he stumbled on gays in the military. He stumbled -- he stumbled on his early economic package and so forth.

The early -- the early media coverage of Bush, at least for the first -- at least for the first month -- month to six weeks or so, was still the questions on his intelligence and things of that nature. So I would say, though, it's gotten a little bit more balanced of late when he's had some obvious victories on taxes and so forth.

BATTISTA: Jake, Michelle?

TAPPER: I don't know. I mean, I think lumping all the media into one group or another is always dangerous. I think it's fair to say that this writer for "The New York Times" writes one way and this commentator for CBS is that way. But it's painting with broad strokes.

I mean, I -- my impression might be that the media has been a little soft, but that's just because the articles that make me mad are the ones I remember. So I don't know. I don't know how comfortable I am just about the media in general.

I mean, obviously, look, there are four of us here. All four of us have written, you know, demonstrably different stories and takes on President Bush. Even just between Chris and Robert, they write very differently and have very different takes on different promises and things that Bush has done.

Certainly, Chris was much more critical of Bush on China than a lot of other members of the conservative media. So, you know, you get into this -- I don't -- Project of Excellence in Journalism. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) they're talking about.

(LAUGHTER)

BATTISTA: OK, we're moving on. All right, move -- moving on.

Why do you suppose that this president is so much less visible than past presidents? Is he just not comfortable, do you think, with that sort of intimacy with the American public? Or does he just make less news?

COTTLE: Well, if you ask his staff, it's because he doesn't want to get in on everything. And kind of with the detainees coming home, he didn't want to kind of steal the spotlight. I mean, this is their explanation.

I think on some level, though, he's just -- he's not a details guy. So he's not out there like Clinton was pitching this, that and the other.

TAPPER: Pitching woo.

COTTLE: No, no. That's a completely different Clinton issue.

TAPPER: Oh, sorry.

COTTLE: And so he just -- he wants things to kind of run their way. And you know, frankly, he doesn't like to work on the weekends, so he goes home to Crawford a lot, so we don't see him on Fridays, Saturdays or Sundays.

BATTISTA: Let me take a phone call here from Steve in Washington state. Go ahead, Steve.

STEVE: During the campaign, I believed Mr. Bush when he told us how he was going to be a compassionate conservative and work together with the Democrats. I kept hearing that, but yet, when you actually look at what's being done, I see he's sticking strictly with conservative causes on this.

I'm giving Mr. Bush a B for betrayal and I'm giving myself a grade of D because I've been duped.

BATTISTA: OK.

TAPPER: Wow!

BATTISTA: Jake, do -- has the president been more conservative than you expected him to be?

TAPPER: No, I think he's governed exactly as he basically said. I mean, look, the one issue on which President Bush governed as somebody who was more moderate was education. That's the one place where he looks to have a lot of moderate action, working closely with members of the Senate, Democrats and Republicans on that. On everything else, he's conservative. He campaigned as a conservative. He's just campaigned as a conservative who liked to pose for photos with little black kids.

COTTLE: But in all fairness to the caller...

GEORGE: Ohhh...

COTTLE: ... I think -- I think that there is...

GEORGE: Jake, that was such a cheap shot, even for you.

COTTLE: Oh, Robert...

GEORGE: Come on. Come on.

COTTLE: Now, wait a minute, I'm going to stand up -- there is an issue with our politicians. We tend to look at their style as their politics. And we've gotten used to Newt Gingrich was a firebrand and he was extremely conservative, same thing with Tom DeLay. And Bush came across as very moderate in his political style, and so people, unless you were like really paying very close attention to the details, which he doesn't like to share all that much, it was easy to see him as much more moderate than he actually is.

BATTISTA: You know what, I want to come back to Newt Gingrich in just a second here, but let me get Bill in. He's been waiting patiently. Your assessment, Bill, from Texas.

BILL: On what issue?

BATTISTA: On the president's performance so far.

Have you been sleeping, Bill? TAPPER: What show is this? Who am I? Why am I here?

BILL: As far as performance, I don't know how anyone really can complain. He did everything -- he's certainly pushed his agenda. And he's done -- he's been very successful with pushing the tax agenda. He's brought the Democrats along almost all the way to where he wanted to be in the first place.

He was able to salvage a terribly bad situation in China even while not giving way and not being conciliatory to the point that it was all our fault, which we all know it wasn't, that, you know, the other aircraft -- I flew, and when you have a large aircraft, there's no way that a fighter, without doing something extremely dangerous, is going to run into a big airplane like that.

BATTISTA: See, you were paying attention.

I've got to take another quick break here. When we come back, I want to go back to talking about Newt Gingrich. He did an editorial in "The New York Times" over the weekend about the president's performance with some interesting points, and we'll talk about that.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BATTISTA: George W. Bush has held only two formal news conferences in his first 100 days in office, half the number held by Clinton. Bush's father held 11 during the same time period.

OK, we're back. E-mails. Jerry in Everett, Washington says: "Where did the idea of this 100-day grade come from anyway? It makes for great media fodder, but gets in the way of any president who's trying to negotiate policy and has to deal with premature judgment. You are playing into the hands of partisan politics by giving these grades."

Andy in Blacksburg, Virginia says: "Everyone complains that Bush doesn't do things for himself. That's fine with me. It's the mark of a good leader to surround himself with those that know what they're doing rather than a bunch of yes-men. The presidency is a team effort."

Newt Gingrich made somewhat of a reference to that in his editorial this weekend in "The New York Times," where he talked about the positive things that the president has done, which is surrounding himself with good people. But he always said: "People see his steady activity and are impressed that he is a serious person with a real plan. Still, they are not yet convinced that they have something real at stake or that his solutions to public policy problems could dramatically change their lives for the better. Consequently, the public hasn't become engaged and hasn't put pressure to bear on Congress to get the Bush program passed."

Agree or disagree with that assessment?

GEORGE: I -- I think that's a -- I think that's a legitimate point that to say my former -- my former boss -- my former boss makes there.

And it's interesting, actually, speaking of the whole 100 days, that the last time that we talked a lot about 100 days was -- was back in '94 when the Republicans ran on their Contract With America and what they were going to get accomplished in 100 days.

But I mean, I think -- I think it is true that the average person is not necessarily completely engaged with the specific details of -- of what Bush is putting forward. I think they like the general tone that he's -- that he's put forward. I think they like the fact that he's not in their living room every single day as we kind of got with Bill Clinton over the last -- over the last eight years.

He may have to do...

CALDWELL: But Robert -- but Robert, I think it just -- it also kind of misses the point. Gingrich is expecting George Bush to be a Newt Gingrich-type of person. I think there are really two ways to get engaged -- to engage the American people: One is the Ronald Reagan way, where you just come to power at a time of national crisis. The other is the Gingrich way, to have this real wild, partisan battleplan. That's the way George McGovern would have ruled.

Bush is in a very different position. He's in a similar position to Clinton. He's the custodian of the country at a time when we don't have much of a national crisis. And I think -- I think people are grateful that he's not the kind of -- not the kind of president Gingrich would like him to be.

TAPPER: No, but also, I mean, the other point, the point that Gingrich was making, which is an excellent one, is that people are not as invested in George W. Bush. And one of the reasons is because they don't know that much about him. They don't know much about how he thinks or how he feels. And yeah, you can make the argument that we know a little bit too much about that when it came to the -- his predecessor.

But by the same token, for instance, a bunch of us went -- George Bush went to the -- President Bush went to the Holocaust Museum about a week or two ago, and he went on a tour of the Holocaust Museum. And there were a bunch of reporters, I being one of them, who wanted to cover him at the Holocaust Museum -- we were certainly not looking for him to make any gaffes; I mean, this is a very somber time -- to see our president come face to face with one of the ugliest episodes of American history, but he wanted that to be private.

And I certainly respect that and I certainly understand that. But he seems to always make that decision: when it came to the return of the detainees, or whatever you want to come them, when it comes to moments of national crisis in this country. There haven't been really any grand ones yet, but people -- the president is somebody who people want to identify with and know in a personal way. And I think he's cheating himself by not allowing that to happen.

BATTISTA: And isn't...

GEORGE: Jake, I...

BATTISTA: Isn't that the environment that we're in today anyway, though, Robert? I mean, we're all so wired and connected today that it seems odd to have a sort of clandestine presidency where we don't see much of that.

GEORGE: Well, I agree with that. But I think what -- I think what Bush is trying to do -- and I think it's a reflection of his general personality as well, though -- is that with -- with Bill Clinton, you had this -- you had -- really had the presidency for the 24-hour news cycle, and he fed off of it, and you know, the CNN, MSNBC, Fox News Channel machines also fed off of him as well. And I think Bush is trying to get a little bit more of a balance put back into the situation, where you don't need to see the president every single day.

Now, I will -- I partly agree with Jake that I think it might have been appropriate to have had some kind of a public -- public setting with the airmen when they came over, because I think one of -- one of Ronald Reagan's advisers said that Reagan also liked to take advantage of that -- that large scenario. But I think Bush is just trying to get some balance and not be around everywhere.

BATTISTA: There's the music. I've got to take a break, you guys. I'm pushing it here, and we'll continue right after the news. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How do you think President Bush is doing so far?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Scary. A lot of times I forget that he's president.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How do you think President Bush is doing so far?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think he's done excellent for the time he's been in.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's very radical, very radical by Canadian standards.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think well of him from my perspective and a lot of people I speak to regard him highly.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Very good. I wish I could talk like that.

(LAUGHTER)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BATTISTA: Welcome back. We are rating the president, like everyone else is doing here, after the first 100 days. Let me take a phone call from Jean in Ohio. Jean, go ahead.

JEAN: When a man shot at the White House, Bush was in the family quarters on a treadmill and Dick Cheney was working in the West Wing. This is very telling to me of who's doing the work.

BATTISTA: You're making a judgment based from that? I guess Jean's gone. Any comments, gang, on that?

CALDWELL: What's he supposed to be? Like hunched over the nuclear button or something like that?

(LAUGHTER)

BATTISTA: I think that just verified the way she already felt.

TAPPER: Well, it was a Tuesday at like 11:30. I will say that.

CALDWELL: Well, you need to exercise some time.

COTTLE: But that's -- you know, they've already spun this. He's very efficient in his work. He doesn't work that hard and he doesn't work that long in hours, but by god, he's efficient when he's in there, and he knows what to do and who to get to do what.

CALDWELL: That's right. Teddy Roosevelt used to like to throw a medicine ball, and he'd so that like all morning long.

TAPPER: But doesn't the presidency seem like a kind of job that you should be just like strapped to a chair and they should be just like feeding you coffee and cigarettes, and like "What about this one? What about this one?"

GEORGE: And I think -- I mean -- and you know, not to be completely unfair, I mean, I think we -- I think all know that, you know, that his predecessor was finding other things to be doing in the White House when...

TAPPER: OK, there we go.

COTTLE: Whoo!

GEORGE: Well, you know...

TAPPER: That was always late at night, Robert, and he was multitasking.

(LAUGHTER)

He was on the phone with congressmen at the time.

COTTLE: That's true. He never stopped.

(LAUGHTER)

BATTISTA: OK, moving on, once again.

GEORGE: He never stopped, that's for sure.

TAPPER: And there was pizza involved.

(LAUGHTER)

BATTISTA: Let me go to the audience here quickly, and Rhonda.

RHONDA: Well, I was just going to say I think we're quick to criticize someone who didn't even get into office and didn't even know he was going to be president until January, 10 months later. So he hasn't had a long time to prepare and get his transition, or he didn't, in place. And we're -- I just think we're quick to criticize someone who didn't really have that long.

BATTISTA: And Joe -- Joe from New York here quickly.

JOE: People confuse sometimes not breaking anything with doing a good job, and I think it's wrong.

BATTISTA: Not breaking anything with doing a good job? OK.

GEORGE: Bobbie...

BATTISTA: Yeah.

GEORGE: ... you know, I wanted to comment on the lady's comment early on. I think that's -- I think she's absolutely correct that, you know, we're talking about the first 100 days and comparing it to Clinton's first 100 days and all this other kind of stuff, and Reagan and his father and so forth. And you know, we've almost -- you know, we've almost forgotten that there was this, you know, this 36-day period where, you know, we never knew who was going to become the president. And given the truncated transition, I think it's -- I think it's absolutely remarkable about how smoothly things are running.

TAPPER: One other point to make about the first 100 days that Bush has had -- and maybe you guys in Atlanta can help us out -- I seem to recall this thing called the Democratic Party. I read about it like a year ago.

(LAUGHTER)

Perhaps -- perhaps we'd be judging him a little different if this party existed. Has anybody...

GEORGE: Hey, Jake...

TAPPER: ... have you seen them on a milk carton?

GEORGE: Jake -- Jake -- Hey, Jake, I think -- I think -- I think the Democratic Party was one of the few things that was added to the endangered species.

TAPPER: Is that right?

BATTISTA: Well, that is true, though. I mean, his term is going more smoothly than the Democrats would like. Now, is that to his credit or is it because there seems to be some disunity among the Democrats, shall we say?

COTTLE: Well, the Democrats are all sitting around in their room licking their wounds and trying to figure out who they can blame for having let the White House slip through their fingers. You know, we were talking about this: Every week, it seems, Bob Reich is on the op- ed page of some newspaper complaining that the party has abandoned its populous routes while the new Democrats are talking about how it needs to be more along the lines of business-friendly. And they just don't have time to worry about what Bush is doing because they're so busy beating each other up.

GEORGE: And don't forget, Michelle, they're also -- they're already all starting to run for president as well, you know, Joe Lieberman and John Edwards.

COTTLE: That's true. They have to fly to California and Iowa and New Hampshire. It's chaos.

BATTISTA: So what are the Democrats going to do? They're going to deal toward the center or are they going -- or do we have to worry about Barbra Streisand's threats and predictions coming true?

CALDWELL: Well, what generally happens when you have two parties jammed together in the center, as they are now -- I'm not -- I'm not particularly impressed with what the Republican Party has to say right now. What generally happens is the party out of power veers toward the wing, which is what happened under Newt Gingrich's -- Newt Gingrich's Republican Party. So it's risky time for Democrats, but they are -- they do have the likelihood of taking over the Senate by default one of these days.

BATTISTA: Ted from Florida is on the phone. Go ahead, Ted.

TED: Yeah. I'm rating him as an F. He's strictly for the businessman. He's supposed to be a compassionate president. Since he's been in, gas has gone up 25 cents a gallon. That shows you he's strictly for the oil men. Thank you.

BATTISTA: Thank you, Ted. Energy, we didn't talk about that. Might that be one of his next big challenges here? COTTLE: Well, certainly, as summer comes on and gas prices are going up at the pumps and people are worried about electricity bills he's going to have to come up with something better than, you know, the response to everything is drill and deregulate and whatnot. But I think the gentleman on the phone has a point that Bush is facing in the polls, while his popularity numbers are very high, his biggest criticism from people is that they don't think he cares about regular folk.

And if the economy continues to go south or if people are really suffering this summer with the energy crunch, he's going to have an even harder time.

BATTISTA: I've got to take another break, you guys. As we do, a couple of e-mails. Rick in Colorado Springs: "President Bush talks as a moderate but walks for the conservatives."

And Norma in Fort Worth says: "I think President Bush deserves an A+ for putting up with the embarrassing commercials that the DNC is airing and for the partisan antics of the Democrats."

We'll be back in just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BATTISTA: I want to get the audience in on this here. Clark from Arizona, go ahead. By the way, we should say you are a Democrat who voted for Bush.

CLARK: And a retired school superintendent who believes the jury is still out on Bush. I strongly believe the number one issue facing Bush is improving education in this country. And not just the symptoms, but the root causes. Salaries, yes, but also, violence in schools, the delivery system, parent responsibility, and a host of our issues that have not been addressed.

I'm concerned that four years will pass and it will just be more of the rhetoric and business as usual in Washington.

BATTISTA: Where is the president, you guys, on his education promises and proposals?

CALDWELL: I think he's moving closer and closer to business as usual. His plan during the campaign was a rather fiery one that included things that fell afoul of the teacher's union like limited school choice or unlimited school choice, vouchers, and -- from the word go, once he got into office, he's shown himself willing to back down on those. This is one area where he's become much more centrist than people had expected. And I would say, much more business as usual.

BATTISTA: Anymore comments on education before we move on?

TAPPER: On the other side, he's also been willing -- Michelle wrote a great piece in the "New Republic." He also seems to be willing to back off the whole idea of testing through 6th grade. And that's something that a lot of conservatives wanted him to back off of, and it's looking like he might be doing that.

I think he does have a remarkable opportunity, having campaigned on this issue so much, to really do a lot of great things, working with Democrats, even maybe, pushing forward some sort of school choice proposal; maybe limited, maybe within public school systems.

But, I don't know that he is going to do that. And that would be disappointing; I think that would be a really brave thing and something he could do.

BATTISTA: And he probably wants to remember, it is always the number one issue with Americans in the last few years.

COTTLE: And it's interesting, if you can contrast it with how he has been on taxes. He's stuck with his $1.6 trillion figure and he brought a sizable number of Senate Democrats with him all the way to 1.2 -- $1.2 trillion. And if he had been as fastidious on some on the more harder edged aspects of his education plan, such as vouchers. It would have been interesting to see how far he could have dragged some Democrats with him.

BATTISTA: Phone call from Mark in California; go ahead, Mark.

CALLER: Yes, I just want to say, number one, the Earth isn't fragile. Number 2, I want to know how many liberal Congressman are flying on planes, rather than using public transportation or Amtrak to get back to their homes. And they'll be the first to complain about drilling off our coast, and they'll be the first complaint, if we have to go to war to keep our oil.

Number 4, hippies and liberals were the first to own SUVs, the Volkswagen van, with the pollution and the peace stickers all over the backs of it.

And number 5, if Terry McAuliffe, the Kennedys and a couple other liberals with a lot of money -- if they care so much about the water, maybe they can all chip in and buy every American a new water system and a purifier system for their homes.

BATTISTA: OK, I thought you had 100 points there. But thank you for your comments. I'm guessing that Mark would give President Bush an A on his performance so far. To the audience here quickly. Alexa?

ALEXA: I just have a comment of why I like President Bush, is because if you look at his character, I see him as a very moral person. I'm very glad to see he's not as corrupt as other politicians I have seen in our past. And if look at past things, there have been many scandals, and my father has met George Bush, or George W. Bush, and has said he seems like a very devout Christian moral man, and I admire that a lot.

BATTISTA: All right. I have to go to another break here. Some more e-mails as we do. Michael says: "Bush has done a wonderful job, considering what he came into. It's about time we elected a strong president."

Joe in Ohio, short on words: "Foreign Policy: A; Environment: F -.

We'll be back in just a minute.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BATTISTA: Judging a leader by 100 days began with Napoleon Bonaparte. Exiled to Elba in 1815, he drove King Louis XVIII from Paris. Within 100 days, he was defeated at Waterloo and the king was reestablished on his throne.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

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(INTERRUPTED FOR LIVE EVENT)

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