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CNN Talkback Live

Guests Discuss State of Union Speech

Aired January 30, 2002 - 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.
In the crosshairs: Iraq, Iran and North Korea.

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GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: States like these and their terrorist allies constitute an axis of evil.

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What is the next target in the war on terror?

Also are prison inmates getting heart transplants at your expense?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They determine, out of the patients that they have to choose from, that this was the best candidates.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

How can an inmate be the best choice?

KARYN BRYANT, HOST: Hello and welcome to TALKBACK LIVE: AMERICA SPEAKS OUT. I'm Karyn Bryant. I will be hosting for the rest of the week. Later this hour we are going to look at that story about prison inmates getting organ transplants.

But first the evil axis. That is what you heard president Bush call Iran, Iraq and North Korea in his State of the Union Address last night. And the president warned the U.S. must be prepared for future operations, future expensive operations.

Here to talk about it, we have Doug Hattaway, former spokesman for the Al Gore presidential campaign; and Ramesh Ponnuru senior editor of "The National Review." Gentlemen, before we get to you though, I do want to have us all check out this little snippet from last night's speech.

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BUSH: By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They can provide these arms to terrorists giving them the means to match their hatred. They could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States. In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic.

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BRYANT: Doug Hattaway and Ramesh Ponnuru, you guys -- first and foremost a question: Why did he go out and name those three places? Why did he say Iran, Iraq and North Korea? Doug, why don't you take this first. Why didn't he just say, we are going to target terrorism around the world?

Doug, perhaps we won't go to you. Maybe we will try Ramesh first.

Rramesh what do you think on that? Why do you think he named specifically Iran, Iraq and North Korea?

RAMESH PONNURU, "NATIONAL REVIEW": Couple reasons. I think part of it to just put those states on notice, that they have, the window of opportunity for them to change their behavior is rapidly closing. I think there was a diplomatic purpose served by naming them specifically.

The other thing is if you listen closely with the president's speech, terrorism isn't only thing that he is concerned about. The search by some of these countries that are hostile to us for weapons of mass destruction had at least an equal level with terrorism. That's part of the threat he is going after. Just talking about terrorism would not have sufficed to prepare the American public for what may very well be phase II of the war.

BRYANT: Do you think though, that the American public is ready for to us to just go after Saddam Hussein? Is everybody here sick of him? Do want to just go and get him now, Ramesh?

PONNURU: Well the polls certainly indicate that the public would be willing to support the president, if he made that determination. But I do think that speeches like the one he gave last night as part of the process of getting people ready for that actually happening.

BRYANT: OK, now, we are going to try to go back to Doug here. Doug, what are your thoughts on the specific naming of three places?

DOUG HATTAWAY, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Well, I thought he could have been sort of sending a shot across their bow. These states have been known obviously to be backing terrorism and developing weapons of mass destruction, we know that.

Remember that the audience for the state of the union is not just folks here at home, although politically that is most important audience, but it's a worldwide audience. And they might me clearly sending a signal to those regimes that they better watch it or they will be next. At the same time I agree he is also beginning a process of preparing the public for what would be a long and dangerous and expensive, as you pointed out, campaign.

The polls do show that people widely support action against Iraq. I don't know that the country is there yet, when it comes to a place like North Korea. So, as far as getting people ready for any action like that, which again, he didn't specifically state, they are just beginning to prepare the American public for something as specific as that.

BRYANT: Doug, don't you think they will also -- the fact, he came out in this speech and he talked about how he -- we are in the deficit right now, and we are going to need to spend more money before we are going to be out of the war right now. Is he also prepping all of us Americans to kind of dig deeper in our wallet and pay for this war?

HATTAWAY: I'm sorry, I didn't hear the end of your question. The part I heard was about the deficit and spending money around this. I think that's one of the tough situations that we are facing. We are back to deficits, we are in recession, a time of war, there is this Enron scandal out there. There is a lot of complications in the atmosphere. I think the president faces a tough challenge in doing what said he was going to do, which was prosecute the war and get the economy back on track within that context. When we are back to deficits, we will see what he is going to propose in detail when his budget comes out on Monday.

BRYANT: OK, now we have somebody here in the audience who does believe that it is time for America to get Saddam. Is that true, Alice?

ALICE: Yes.

BRYANT: Why do you think so?

ALICE: Because we need to finish the job. We didn't finish it last time. It's been hanging on for all these years. It is going to come back to haunt us.

BRYANT: You think so, so you would you like to see military action, you would like to Saddam eradicated?

ALICE: Yes.

BRYANT: Do people have thoughts on North Korea? They are saying people aren't really sure why North Korea is being targeted as much. Iran and Iraq are a little more familiar in people's minds -- Doug or Ramesh.

PONNURU: Well, I think North Korea is being targeted because it's a lunatic regime that is interested in weapons of mass destruction. It's showing signs of implosion and it's hard to know what they are going to do faced with that situation. I think North Korea has been a subject of concern even if it hasn't been on the front burner of the public for many years.

As recently as 1994 President Clinton was contemplating taking military action because of the concern about that country.

BRYANT: But you weren't surprised, Ramesh, that he named these? A lot of times in these speeches we get people floating out these ideas and they don't really say anything specific about who they are going to target. Was it surprising to you that he named these three places in general?

PONNURU: Not so much that he named it, but one thing that was surprising and kind of interesting is there has been a debate in Washington and even within his administration and among supporters of the administration about Iran, about whether to move closer to the Iranian regime and the people who were against that policy had been saying no, the Iranian public is actually more pro-American than the regime that oppresses them and we ought to be siding with the Iranian public. And that's exactly what Bush did last night and he did it in explicitly those terms. I think it was kind of interesting and surprising for the president to definitively settle that debate within his administration like that.

BRYANT: You used the word explicit and specific. One thing he explicitly did not say was Enron. How many of you here were expecting him to throw out the "E" word last night?

(APPLAUSE)

BRYANT: A lot of people, right? But he didn't say it at all. Now, Eric, seriously, you clapped for that, why do you think he didn't say Enron or were you really expecting him to come on here and explain himself and explain the whole situation?

ERIC: I was expecting him to come out and explain the whole situation, explain to us why, why he didn't do that.

BRYANT: Explain -- OK, well let's first talk but whole Enron thing anyway. There is a lot to explain and that's really the problem.

Doug, do you believe that by not specifically talking about Enron he was just trying to avoid the backlash?

OK, Doug did not hear me. I am going to go back to Ramesh. Ramesh, you are with me and I am loving that.

PONNURU: I'm taking all of Doug's time.

BRYANT: Ramesh, I'm curious, what do you think? Why didn't he specifically address the Enron issue when he knows people at home are wondering about that?

PONNURU: Actually, I think that in one way you can look at the entire speech as a rebuke to the focus on Enron. He saying look, before we get to normal Washington politics and scandal accusations, we have to remember, we are still in a war. There are real dangers, danger, as he puts it, perils drawn closer and closer, time is not on our side. In that respect I think that there was healthy reassertion of perspective in that speech.

BRYANT: Today some Democratic strategists, including James Carville, put out a memo and he was basically telling other Democrats there is an election coming up in November. We have chance to take over, all the seats in the House are up and we was basically saying that people should us Enron as a way to undercut Republican support. Do you think that that is a good idea?

PONNURU: I think Democrats are overestimating the potential power of Enron as issue, although it does hurt Republicans. But I think -- I haven't read Carville's memo so I'm only going from the reports that I have read, but I think to the extent that Carville is saying go after Enron for partisan reasons, he is undermining the effectiveness of his own political strategy, because if the Democrats are seen as doing this for political reasons, people are going to discount for that factor.

BRYANT: That's kind of what happened, are you saying, with Clinton? People kind of went after him for his indiscretions to the point where people got sick of them just talking about his indiscretions, and they didn't talk about his politics anymore.

PONNURU: Yes, and in particular, when seen as being done with political motives, as opposed to, you know, wanting to get to the bottom of a question, see what reforms need to be made if any. If it's -- this a hunt to make some political hits on the administration and a popular president that we can't fight in other ways, I think that's not going to work and I think there may even be a small backlash to it.

BRYANT: OK, well, we believe that Doug is with us now. Doug, what are your thoughts on Carville's strategizing to undercut the Republicans?

HATTAWAY: It sounded like you were talking about Enron when I came back.

BRYANT: Yes. We have been talking about Enron for a minute here.

HATTAWAY: I think on one hand it is obviously a problem for the administration because they are closely aligned with this company. I don't think ties get any closer than the ties Enron had with this White House and this administration.

And I'm not so sure they are handling it that great right now. Of course you have the controversy with refusing to cooperate with Congress on the production of energy policy, which Enron officials were highly involved with and I understand what the White House has been saying about that.

At the same time it looks bad, and the polls have been showing that people think they are hiding something.

BRYANT: Absolutely.

HATTAWAY: On the other hand, I think on the Democratic side I think it would be dangerous for Democrats to try to play this too politically and overreach. That's what the Republicans did around Bill Clinton and it backfired on them.

BRYANT: Absolutely. Well, Doug, we have a comment from somebody here in the audience about the ol' Enron scandal.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, I think that in the State of the Union it wasn't appropriate for President Bush to mention Enron and that even though so many of the Democrats are trying to pin this on him, it's shown that his administration didn't bail them out. And so I think it is somewhat frustrating to them and they are just trying to get some political gain by saying oh, he didn't mention it in the State of the Union.

BRYANT: Go ahead, Doug.

HATTAWAY: I agree it didn't make sense for him to mention Enron by name in the State of the Union, but I also think what you said points out one of the problems they have got. They are saying that they didn't do anything when they knew this company was in trouble. It was one of the largest companies in the country. A lot of peoples' lives have been ruined and kind of the pickle the White House is in, is saying that because they had perceived conflicts of interest, they didn't do anything in the public interest. I think that is one of the dilemmas they are facing, and polls I have seen show that people think they should have spoken up when they knew something was going wrong.

BRYANT: Right. Well, I tell you what, I have a feeling this Enron thing is going to play out for quite some time. That's all the time we have to talk about the State of the Union. Doug Hattaway of Hattaway communications and Ramesh Ponnuru, thank you both for joining us, and we will be right back here on TALKBACK LIVE.

Up next: do prisoners get better medical care than you?

ANNOUNCER: Coming up on TALKBACK LIVE: Of all the people on the waiting list, how did a prison inmate get a heart transplant?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Supreme Court back in 1976 determined that in fact an inmate as a constitutional right to medical care.

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ANNOUNCER: Does that include precious organs? And should tax dollars pay for the operation? We will get to the heart of this one in just a minute.

(INTERRUPTED FOR CNN COVERAGE OF A LIVE EVENT)

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