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CNN Live Today

Interview with Ron Brownstein

Aired August 05, 2002 - 10:20   ET

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

LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: We shift our focus now to politics. There is a lot going on today. We have news on the president, the former president, and the man who would be president, if he had had his way.
Let's get to it. Our guest this morning, Ron Brownstein. He is with the "Los Angeles Times." He joins us this morning. We thank you very much for your time. You are in Washington today, right?

RON BROWNSTEIN, "LOS ANGELES TIMES": Yes, indeed. Good morning.

HARRIS: Good deal, how have you been?

BROWNSTEIN: Good. More news of the bizarre, back to the political world.

HARRIS: Yes, we will get to some of that in just a bit here. But first off, let's talk about President Bush. Moments ago, we just saw him landing in Pittsburgh, and we know he is prepared now to go on what is being called, I think, a 32-day vacation, and there are some who are questioning about the timing of this right now. The nation at war, and the president still saying, he is going to go on with life as usual here, and go on a vacation. What do you make of all that?

BROWNSTEIN: Well, I know polls have said that the public doesn't mind the president going on an extended vacation. I still think it is not entirely without risk, and I think the White House also feels that way by the fact that they have scheduled so many working vacation days, so much travel for the president to keep him in the public eye, especially with concerns about the economy growing. I think they are very conscious of not having it appear that he is sort of asleep at the switch, and they will be pretty diligent in this month to try to keep him out in front of the public eye whenever they can.

HARRIS: You know, it is funny you mention that, because when I first thought about this, what occurred to me was the idea of the nation being at war, and it may be that the economy issue may actually be more ticklish than the war effort then.

BROWNSTEIN: Well, look, the Dow is out there everyday as sort of a daily thermometer of how the public and the markets feel about the strength of the economy in a way that it wasn't in previous generations. So many more people are in the market, it is so much more relevant to peoples lives than it was 10, 20 years ago. So you have this kind ticker that is out there, that is sort of putting a verdict on them day after day after day, and I think that does increase the pressure on them, and I think you will see through this economic summit he is doing in the middle of August, I think they will keep him visible. They are sensitive to the idea that he is just lounging around for a month while people are concerned about their 401(K)s.

HARRIS: OK. Well, again, considering all of that in this particular climate, this news coming out in this "Time" magazine piece, I don't know if you have read the piece yet, but...

BROWNSTEIN: Yes, I have.

HARRIS: the piece is saying that, essentially, the Clinton administration had prepared a plan of attack against al Qaeda and it had been handed off to the Bush administration and for some reason or whatever reason, the administration may have dropped the ball here or didn't follow up on it. What is the White House saying about that?

BROWNSTEIN: Well, let the finger-pointing begin. I mean, I think -- this may be why. This sort of piece -- this was a terrific article in "Time" magazine going through the failures, really, of both the Clinton and the Bush administrations to deal with al Qaeda as aggressively as they might, in hindsight, have done. This really, I think, Leon, argues for the independent commission to go out and really explore this from stem to stern, because on the one hand, there is some pretty damning evidence about the Bush team not fully perhaps appreciating the gravity of what they were being given by the Clintonites (ph), at least by the Clinton portrayal of it. On the other hand, there is plenty of evidence here that the Clinton administration sort of was stuck, unable to come up with new approaches and really take the fight to al Qaeda in its final months, despite growing concern. So there really is plenty of finger-pointing available on both sides.

HARRIS: Well, speaking of that Clinton administration being stuck, one voice in that administration has come unstuck over the weekend, that being the voice of Al Gore and the editorial that he had in the "New York Times," really some of the strongest words we have heard uttered yet against President Bush's administration and the handling of certain issues, whether it be the Enron influence of the White House or the economy.

Let's -- I want to put up a couple of lines that we culled from that article. You see here -- Mr. Gore, rather, saying yesterday, "Standing up for the people, not the powerful was the right choice in 2000. And, in fact, it is the Democratic Party's meaning and mission.

"The suggestion from some in our party that we should no longer speak that truth, especially at a time like this, strikes me as bad politics and worse, wrong in principle."

I heard many Republican voices over the weekend using these words of Al Gore's of proof that he is standing -- starting something of a class warfare right now.

BROWNSTEIN: Well, first of all, with Clinton and Gore in the news so much, I'm sure some Democrats are thinking, how can I miss you if you won't go away, but the Gore article has to be seen as much as aimed at Democratic critics as at the Bush administration.

It comes in the wake of his running mate, Joe Lieberman, joining other senators at the Democratic Leadership Counsel last week criticizing the populist tone of his 2000 campaign, his people versus the powerful message, arguing that it drove away upper middle class suburbanite voters. And in many ways, he was responding as much to them as he was targeting the Bush administration. On one hand, I think the argument is somewhat beside the point. There really is, I think, little evidence that the "people versus the powerful" either attracted the voters it was meant to attract, or repelled the voters that Lieberman said it did. But it does show that Gore is starting to formulate a case, an I-told-you-so case, if he does run again in 2004. I told you there would be a budget deficit, there is. I told you that Bush would move in a different direction on the environment and he has. And he is beginning to lay down his argument. Now whether this opens him to counterattack from Republicans saying it is class warfare is one thing, but in a Democratic primary, I think he is beginning to find his voice, and beginning to signal how he might run again if he does.

HARRIS: Yes, I have got to tell you, I took up that same theme in my head, kept reverberating I read through that piece, about I told you so, I told you so.

All right. One more newspaper clipping we have got to get to. This is our news of the bizarre for you, Ron.

BROWNSTEIN: Yes.

HARRIS: Check this out. From the "New York Post," we saw this a couple of days ago. Bill Clinton being quoted as saying that, "If Iraq came across the Jordan river, I would grab a rifle and get in the trench and fight and die."

What was he thinking when he said this?

BROWNSTEIN: Well, you know, fund-raisers have never been the best -- I guess he said this at a fund raiser in Canada. I remember in his first term at one Democratic fund-raiser late at night, he said he thought he had raised taxes too much, which sent the entire party into fits after going through all of that.

Look, Bill Clinton earlier -- a few weeks ago, said that President Bush had his sequence wrong. He should focus on Mideast peace first, and then look at trying to depose Saddam Hussein if then at all. I suppose that this was a way of sort of closing that circle and saying that if Iraq posed a threat, you know, he took it as seriously as anyone else. But it is a little bit of kind of going too far at the lip. A version -- a malady to which he has been prone at fund-raisers before.

HARRIS: You know, he must have been at a convention of amnesiacs. I mean, that's the only way he could probably get away with something like that without being criticized for it.

All right. Ron Brownstein. Thanks much, appreciate it. BROWNSTEIN: Thank you.

HARRIS: Take care, pal. See you later.

BROWNSTEIN: I can (ph) ruin the segment.

HARRIS: All right.

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