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American Morning

Sound Off: Bipartisan Feelings Ebbing on Capitol Hill?

Aired December 03, 2001 - 08:46   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.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Our Sound Off this morning, politicking in a time of war. Ever since September 11, political leaders have stressed the need to be united and for the nation to move ahead. But excerpts of a memo written by Democratic strategists and published in the "Washington Times" just last week outlined the party's need to start campaigning for 2002 and to begin trying to discredit the Bush administration.

It said, "We should not give voice to doubts in this period, but we should be prepared to highlight issues that allow those doubts to emerge later."

So the question is are the Democrats moving too fast too soon?

Joining us now from our Washington bureau, Paul Begala, former adviser to President Clinton, and here in New York, Rich Lowry, editor of "The National Review." Happy Monday morning, guys. Thanks for being with us.

RICH LOWRY, EDITOR, "THE NATIONAL REVIEW": Hi, Paula.

ZAHN: We wanted to touch on a little bit more of what Stan Greenburg (ph) and James Carville and Bob Shrum, friends of yours, Paul, had to say in this memo called "Politics After The Attack," and essentially it's setting the stage for what some of the issues could be in a 2002 midterm campaign. Immediately upon catching a sniff of this, Majority Leader Trent Lott called this kind of strategizing, "shameful, absurd and very poorly timed."

Paul, doesn't he have a point there, at a time when our nation is waging war against Afghanistan and other potential host nations of terrorists?

PAUL BEGALA, FORMER CLINTON ADVISER: Well, first, let's say for the record when President Clinton was waging war on behalf of America in Kosovo and it was Trent Lott and other Republicans who undermined him, when President Clinton in December of 1998, when I worked for him in the White House, had air strikes against Saddam Hussein, Trent Lott opposed that.

So I think it's, the Democrats have been terrifically patriotic in supporting this war effort, in supporting the president in the war effort. But that doesn't mean he should get carte blanche to hand over our federal treasury to his corporate contributors, to start to drill in the wilderness and mine in the national parks and log in the national forests and put arsenic in water and all the rest of his nonsensical right-wing agenda. It's nuts.

ZAHN: Now, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait. BEGALA: We're at war overseas but we are going to have politics here at home.

ZAHN: Wait, wait, wait. Paul, Paul, Paul, Paul, Paul, stop, stop, stop. You're saying that the Republicans are putting arsenic in the water? BEGALA: Well, no, what they want to do, they want to roll back the Clinton protections that we put in...

LOWRY: Paul, they're the same... BEGALA: ... to try to reduce the arsenic in the water.

LOWRY: They're the same protections. They just, you may have missed this news, but the Bush administration issued exactly the same regulation. But the Clinton administration... BEGALA: Under immense pressure from the Democrats.

LOWRY: Well, so what? So why are you still... BEGALA: That was a victory for my side.

LOWRY: So what? So why are you still saying he's poisoning the water. BEGALA: Because left to their own devices they would despoil our environment...

LOWRY: You are on, you are on September's...

(CROSSTALK)

ZAHN: OK, wait, wait, wait, wait. I can't understand both of you when you talk over it. Rich, you finish your point and then we'll let Paul react so we can understand both of you.

LOWRY: Paul is still in September, Paul is obviously still on September 10th talking points. Let me say this, Paula. You know, Democrats like Paul Begala spent nine months saying that President Bush, in effect, had staged a coup in the election last year, suggesting that the president of the United States was no better than Saddam Hussein or something. And what this memo clearly suggests is that they're just waiting for the opportunity to try to undermine the legitimacy of the president of the United States as soon as they think it is safe to do so again. BEGALA: There is no...

ZAHN: Fire away, Paul. BEGALA: There is no doubt that George Bush is president today.

LOWRY: Thank you. BEGALA: There's also no doubt that he's president because...

LOWRY: We're glad you finally admitted that. BEGALA: Let me finish my thought. Because the Supreme Court stopped the lawful counting of votes in an outrageous judicial bypass of the democratic process.

ZAHN: All right, all right. BEGALA: So, yes, I don't back off from that an inch.

LOWRY: Paul, again, you need to...

ZAHN: OK, come on, Paul... BEGALA: Unlike the Republicans...

LOWRY: Paul, you need to... BEGALA: ... who refused to support President Clinton when we were at war, we Democrats are supporting this war and supporting our president. But that doesn't mean he should be allowed to give $254 million of our tax money to the goofballs and crooks at Enron who are today filing for Chapter 11, just because they're his biggest corporate contributors. That's what he wants to do. And that's nuts.

(CROSSTALK)

ZAHN: Now, Paul, excuse me, wait, wait. Rich, you aren't suggesting that it's not OK to bring up these extremely controversial topics at this time.

LOWRY: Sure. Sure. Sure, by all means.

ZAHN: Do you favor any debate at all on this...

LOWRY: Sure, by all...

ZAHN: ... or do you think this is unpatriotic for any fight to be going on at all over this? BEGALA: Correct.

LOWRY: No, Paula, by all means. Let's have a debate over what the best economic policy is for this country. But let's conduct it in a responsible way that does not entail taking opportunistic and demagogic pot shots at the president of the United States during a time of war. They are calling, the Democrats are calling this the Bush recession. Well, the fact is the recession began in March. And look, let's look at an economic fact here. Industrial production has been declining since September 2000. It's been declining for 13 straight months, the longest straight decline since 1932. That is the economy President Bush inherited.

And to call this the Bush recession is really a shameful and unworthy charge --

ZAHN: All right...

LOWRY: ... even for Paul Begala.

ZAHN: Paul, in the end... BEGALA: Well, I haven't done it yet but...

ZAHN: In the end... BEGALA: I haven't done it yet but...

ZAHN: Paul, isn't it essentially what this is all about? You no doubt saw the same coverage all of us saw over the weekend, both in the "Washington Post" and the "New York Times," where there is a suggestion of a rift between some of the presidential advisers when it comes to the emphasis he should take on the war versus the emphasis he should take on the economy and isn't this all about creating some kind of platform for 2002, Paul, where Democrats can taint or put President Bush in a box and say it's all your fault? That's what this is all about, isn't it? BEGALA: Well, absolutely, and I certainly hope so. This is about democracy. This is what level of democracy we still have. We're actually going to be finding out pretty soon. When people say that just because we're at war, you know, we had elections during the Civil War. We had elections during the Second World War. We've had elections during national crises before and we're going to have elections in 2002 and I think that's a very good thing.

The question is we have an administration now that has put a journalist in jail in Houston because she wouldn't reveal her sources in a murder investigation, that subpoenaed the phone records of John Solomon (ph), an Associated Press reporter...

ZAHN: All right, all right, you're getting off the track here, Paul. BEGALA: ... that now wants to suspend the right to trial.

ZAHN: Come back to the issue of the economy. BEGALA: No, this is about whether we have a democracy.

ZAHN: Who's fault -- come back to the issue and you both get 10 seconds apiece. Closing thought, whose fault is it that there's a recession now? You heard what Rich Lowry said, that this is the economy that President Bush inherited from your guy, President Clinton.

LOWRY: I think it's the Democrats' fault for blocking substantive tax cuts. What made the economy take off? Bill Clinton in 1997 signed a cap gains tax cut. We should adopt exactly that approach again.

ZAHN: Paul, you get the final word this morning. BEGALA: Bill Clinton modestly raised the taxes on the very wealthiest Americans, paid off Ronald Reagan's and George Bush's deficit and gave us the greatest economic boom in history. George Bush came in and has done the opposite. He's cut taxes on the very rich. It has plunged us right back into deficits and yes, we have another...

LOWRY: Oh, Paul, that's absurd. BEGALA: ... Bush recession.

LOWRY: That's absurd. BEGALA: Those two just seem to go together...

LOWRY: All those tax cuts... BEGALA: ... like peanut butter and jelly.

LOWRY: Paul, all those tax cuts are four or five years old.

ZAHN: All right, you know what I need? You know what I need from you two this morning? Maybe I can get you to agree on one thing. Do either one of you think Osama bin Laden should be on "Time" magazine's Man of the Year cover? Paul, yes or no? LOWRY: No, absolutely... BEGALA: No. No, I think it should be firefighters in New York City.

ZAHN: Rich?

LOWRY: Absolutely not. BEGALA: Union members, by the way. Good union members in New York.

LOWRY: Osama bin Laden may not even live out the year, so I think putting him on "Time" magazine's cover would be a big mistake.

ZAHN: See, I thought I could get them to agree on something.

LOWRY: You got us to agree.

ZAHN: Thank you, gentlemen, for your time.

LOWRY: Thanks.

ZAHN: Glad to have both of you with us. BEGALA: Thank you.

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