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This Week in Politics
Wall Street Appears Weak; Iraq War Becoming No. 1 Issue; Praying for Votes: Faith and Politics
Aired March 23, 2008 - 13:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
TOM FOREMAN, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Disaster averted on Wall Street, as the Feds help the sale of a billion dollar bank at a fire sale price, but stocks keep riding the roller coaster on fears of more economic upheaval.
On the campaign trail, talk of race, religion, war and scandal. But the only question that seems to matter, what will the candidates do? What can they do to stop the runaway train called recession?
(END VIDEOTAPE)
FOREMAN: It's time to party like it's 1929 on THIS WEEK IN POLITICS.
(NEWSBREAK)
FOREMAN: (AUDIO GAP) ... just weren't paying attention. Top to bottom, it really was issue number one.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
FOREMAN (voice-over): In 1929, the start of the Great Depression, the famous headline in "Variety" was, "Wall Street Lays an Egg." The headlines this week, almost as scary.
As the once unstoppable Bear Stearns was caught and skinned by the mortgage crisis, and, as far as interest rates go, the Federal Reserve was doing more slashing and than a bad guy in a B-movie horror film, President Bush tried to calm jittery investors.
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: And so I understand there's short-term difficulty, but I want people to understand that in the long term, we're going to be just fine.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: ... that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
FOREMAN: The stock market responded with a steady and measured correction.
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Only moments ago, the Dow Jones industrials closed up over 400 points.
FOREMAN: But polls continue to show voters increasingly fearful. And of course you can always bank on some terrible talk at times like these.
LYLE GRAMLEY, FORMER FEDERAL RESERVE GOVERNOR: We need to begin thinking outside the box because what we're experiencing now in financial markets is unlike anything I have seen in more than 50 years of looking at the economy.
FOREMAN: The president continued to project an aura of confidence.
BUSH: There are problems, but the key is to recognize problems and to act early, which we have done.
FOREMAN: But just like it is in the housing market now, not everyone is buying.
ALAN BLINDER, ECONOMIST, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY: We're not on the precipice of the Great Depression. But we're facing similar problems, certainly problems in the financial system we haven't seen in the post-World War II era.
PETER MORICI, UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND: There is a possibility we could have a depression. We could be looking at 1929. I am not forecasting that and I don't want to be represented as such. But the dangers are real and apparent.
SEN. HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON (D-NY), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I cannot stress to you, we are in a very dangerous period in the economy. We need vigilance and we need leadership.
FOREMAN: Presidents as far as back as Herbert Hoover have found they really don't have much control over the economy. But that does not stop candidates on the stump from saying they can make it better.
SEN. BARACK OBAMA (D-IL), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: If you're really ready for change, we can't just tinker around the edges. We have got to bring about a fundamental change to our economy.
FOREMAN: That's right, a candidate for every voter, votes in every state, a chicken in every pot.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
FOREMAN: So, the key question here is not only, will the candidates do what they promised, but in terms of the economy, can they really do all that much?
To help us answer all that, Politico's executive editor, Jim Vandehei, over in their Virginia headquarters, and in New York, Dan Gross, a senior editor at "Newsweek."
Dan, let me start with you. The economy right now would seem to be one of those issues that favors Democrats, because, when the economy goes bad, people switch who's in the White House. Is this going to play their way or is it too volatile to know?
DAN GROSS, SENIOR EDITOR, "NEWSWEEK": I think at this point, it does act in the Democrats' favor. Republicans tend to do poorly when an economy goes south because their solution always tends to be tax cuts.
McCain's top advisers who I have been talking to this week emphasize that what needs to be done is extend the Bush tax cuts. Those don't expire until 2011. In the long list of things that people are worried about, marginal income tax rates in 2011 has to be somewhere close to the bottom.
FOREMAN: On the other hand, Jim, there seems to be this question. On the Democratic side, there's a lot of talk about helping out families that are struggling, helping out people who bought homes that they couldn't afford.
And yet polls indicate that a substantial number of Americans say, no, if people made those mistakes, we shouldn't be bailing them out with tax money.
JIM VANDEHEI, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, "THE POLITICO": It's such a complicated thing to do for government right now because some people did get duped. They bought mortgages they shouldn't buy. Other people didn't get duped. They knew they were getting into houses that they couldn't afford and they thought unrealistically that the market would continue to boom.
And that's what lawmakers are struggling with. I think Dan was right. In the short term, the politics favor the Democrats, because the Democratic candidates are talking about giving you assistance if you cannot pay for your mortgage or helping the state help you be able to avoid foreclosure.
The problem is, this is such a tricky economic problem, because there are so many different variables, and it's not exactly clear what the government response should be and the government doesn't have a great track record of acting with urgency and acting wisely.
So that's what people are going to have to fight with I think throughout this campaign. And it's going to continue to be very unpredictable.
FOREMAN: A lot of people are cutting back on their spending. Take a look at this graphic. When you look at the things that people are not going to spend as much on, leisure activities, summer vacation season is starting, 75 percent of the people say they are cutting back on that, 59 percent cutting back on clothing, heating and electricity, 46 percent cutting back on that.
And then all the way down here, food and medicine, a third of the people saying they're going to cut back on that.
Do you have a sense, Dan, that the public's understanding of this issue is different than what Washington is saying? Because there does seem to be a lot of really pronounced fear out there. GROSS: Absolutely. There is a big disconnect. And the best illustration of that is the way people talk about inflation. When the numbers come out, the White House people, the Fed tend to talk about the core rate of inflation, which excludes food and energy. Well, that would be great if we didn't have to eat or drink or drive cars.
People are experiencing inflation, whether it's higher gas prices, higher food prices. These are the big things that they always spend on money every week. So, people, I think, are feeling a greater level of insecurity than some of the numbers might otherwise indicate.
FOREMAN: And, Jim, there's a lot of assurance from some economists that say simply that there are safeguards in place, so that we won't go into a Great Depression.
And, yet, a lot of people fear that that might happen. What we do know is this. The next president is actually going to be involved in the economy much more than presidents once were. What are the things that they can really tweak and affect that might affect our lives?
VANDEHEI: Right. The truth is that nobody has a clue. Certainly some people are better educated on the fundamental of economics perhaps in Washington than outside of Washington.
But even the policy-makers and the lawmakers that you talk to, they don't really know how far and how this will actually spread. You're talking about very complex financial arrangements that a lot of people at very high levels don't completely understand.
And the ripple effect is very unpredictable. Nobody knew that Bear Stearns was going to go and lose so much money so quickly they would have to get sold to another company brokered by the federal government.
And so, in the short term, the Fed is obviously taking a very muscular role, and Bush is basically saying, well, let's hold off and make sure. Let's see what happens with the stimulus plan, which we already enacted, and then make a decision on what to do.
FOREMAN: So, Dan, it seems like one of the questions here is going to be the relationship between government and business. The Republicans always tout that as being an important thing to build on.
But do you need a friend relationship now or an adversary relationship? Does the government need to be beating business into place and saying, now, behave?
GROSS: I don't think they need to be beating them. And the truth is, the Democratic Party has moved much closer to the center and some critics would say too far to the right when it comes to being cozy with corporate America.
You know, Clinton and Obama are raising tons of money, more money than McCain, from Wall Street, private equity, hedge fund players. So, I don't think there's going to be this sort of class-based warfare where they go after companies as a whole.
One of the big issues is going to be, however, over regulation. We had the system where the banks that are part of the Federal Reserve, where they have deposit insurance, they're regulated. But these players like Bear Stearns, investment banks, private equity funds, hedge funds, which have balance sheets that rival the size of old-fashioned banks and have the potential to blow up the system, they are not regulated.
And the Bush administration's response thus far has been, you know, it's OK. Now they're starting to think differently. So, the big battle and discussion is going to be about bringing more of these financial institutions under the umbrella of existing or new federal financial regulations.
FOREMAN: I think you may be exactly right about that. And we will watch for it.
Jim, Dan, thank you both for being here.
We have got a lot of questions still to come. Will the Iraq war turn out to be a winning factor for the GOP? Are the Democrats ever going to produce a nominee?
And mind your manners -- how to behave when you find yourself caught in one those pesky sex scandals. We have got all the answers right here on THIS WEEK IN POLITICS.
And of course, speaking of answers, the economy is the word on the treat.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I just think that things on the edge. We're getting to the point where this whole thing might explode.
FOREMAN: Are you worried?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sure I am because you know, in the last eight years, we have been under turmoil with this war going on and all of the funds and everything, the finances have been shifted over to this war.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, it just seems to me that a lot of people are losing their life savings and their retirement plans because of a lot of financial mismanagement by bankers.
FOREMAN: Do you think that this is the fault of the government or of the private sector?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think it's the fault of the government getting involved too much in the private sector.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think maybe the government should control it a little bit more. But, in the end, it's the cycle of greed.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: People, they buy houses, and they bought a house too big for themselves. Well, it's not the government's fault.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm not so worried. I think that -- I think that with the elections and everything and once we get a new president, things will change.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But the real deal is that people just are afraid to go out and spend because they don't know what the future of this economy is going to look like and how long this area, recession, or whatever you want to call it, is actually going to last.
FOREMAN: And you're one of those people right now?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Of course I am. I think most of us are.
FOREMAN: Are you worried about the economy?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, because it's like the Republicans are in charge. It's fine.
FOREMAN: That's all it takes?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
FOREMAN: What if the Democrats get in charge?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They will screw it up.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
FOREMAN: The Democratic contenders spent much of the week poking at each other like teenage siblings on a long car ride, whereas the Republican wannabe actually took a long ride.
So, let's head overseas to sweep up the trail dust.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
FOREMAN (voice-over): Senator McCain spent the week on a whirlwind tour of world capitals and war zones, a campaign trip -- well, officially a Senate fact-finding trip aimed at burnishing his commander in chief credentials.
SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R-AZ), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We continue to be concerned about Iranian taking the al Qaeda into Iran, training them.
FOREMAN: It might have gone better if he hadn't gotten his insurgents confused.
OBAMA: Just yesterday, we heard Senator McCain confuse Sunni and Shia, Iran and al Qaeda. Maybe that is why he voted to go to war with a country that had no al Qaeda ties.
(LAUGHTER) (APPLAUSE)
FOREMAN: And it might have gotten more coverage if the Democrats weren't banging heads back here at home.
CLINTON: When others made the decision to remove their names from the ballot, I didn't, because I believed your voices and your votes should count.
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
FOREMAN: The question, should Michigan and Florida, which held primaries in violation of party rules, have do-overs?
OBAMA: Just follow the rules that the DNC gave us. They said that Michigan and Florida wouldn't count. My name wasn't even on the ballot in Michigan, and I didn't campaign at all in Florida.
FOREMAN: And, at the end of the week, it looked like they would not count. Both states took a pass and refused to decide on new elections, mainly because both candidates refused to agree.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (singing): It's raining McCain. Hallelujah. It's raining McCain. Amen
FOREMAN: Back to Senator McCain. Not only did the worst homemade campaign video ever show up on YouTube, but it also turns out that one of his staffers circulated a video critical of Barack Obama and fiery Minister Jeremiah Wright. In what has become a weekly ritual sacrifice for all campaigns, the staffer was suspended.
REVEREND JEREMIAH WRIGHT, TRINITY UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST: ... why so many folks are hating on Barack Obama.
FOREMAN: But those inflammatory sermons by Obama's old pastor and friend monopolized a lot of coverage this week. And the candidate took a dramatic step.
OBAMA: Reverend Wright's comments were not only wrong, but divisive.
FOREMAN: In a major speech, he condemned the pastor's words, but...
OBAMA: I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can disown my white grandmother.
The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we have never really worked through.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
FOREMAN: Some are calling this the single most important speech of this campaign. Of course, some call this the best program on cable since "The Sopranos."
So, let's hash it out. In Portland, Oregon, "New York Times" correspondent Jeff Zeleny is traveling with the Obama campaign. And with me in Washington, CNN political contributor and Democratic strategist Donna Brazile.
Jeff, does the Obama feel like with this speech they have put this issue of race behind them?
JEFF ZELENY, "THE NEW YORK TIMES": No, the campaign does not feel they have put it totally behind them. Why is that? You can just listen to talk radio. Senator Obama this week after the speech was interviewed by a Philadelphia sports radio station. He wanted to talk about the Final Four.
They wanted to talk about race. So, this is going to certainly keep reverberating. He tried to move it beyond by doing two speeches on Iraq in the subsequent days, but this issue, they know, is not behind them fully.
FOREMAN: You have got to wonder how much it's playing a role in the numbers. Right now, look at the delegate count here. He is still substantially out front here, comfortably out front, in some ways, Donna.
But, even though he's winning in the delegate count, he's winning in the popular vote and he's winning states, do you think that this is the reason that Hillary Clinton is rising in national polls?
DONNA BRAZILE, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, there's no question that, when the conversation is talked about, race itself, it scares some people.
I thought Senator Obama did the country, the party, and of course his campaign a great deal of service by talking about race. Most politicians don't talk about race. They're afraid to. And I think what Obama tried to do was not only discuss his relationship with Reverend Wright, his faith, but also he tried to tell the American people, this is the time for us to really have an important conversation about race.
FOREMAN: This was a very nuanced speech, though, I must say. And some people reacted by saying, look, in a sledgehammer campaign, you don't have time for nuance. You have to say, this guy is wrong and I'm right. And he was saying, it's more complex than that.
BRAZILE: It is more complex. Look, most African-Americans -- and Obama is not, you know, African-American. He is partly white. His mother was white, and his father was from Africa. So, he represents more than just African-Americans.
But, somehow or another, everyone believes that Obama has to talk about black people. He should not. It is not his responsibility. It's the responsibility of the country to talk about race in politics. But what he tried to do was put it into context, the historical context, and also to try to tell the American people, look, we all have a responsibility to move this conversation to a different place.
FOREMAN: Jeff, the question of Michigan and Florida continues to hang out there. And both campaigns seem unwilling to agree to this. Now, even if they let Michigan and Florida in, the way they are now, Barack Obama would still be in the lead. What is the Obama camp's chief concern right now?
ZELENY: The Obama camp's chief concern is some type of a revote in Michigan and Florida, because what that could do is give Senator Clinton some more votes on the popular vote total.
The things going on right now, the math of this race, is really three things, number of pledged delegates, the number of states won, and the amount of the popular vote that either candidate has won. Without revotes in Florida or Michigan, the Obama campaign is fairly confident that Senator Clinton cannot overtake them really in either of the three, but certainly the popular vote is one.
But the Obama campaign has been really trying to run the clock out on this. Senator Clinton went to Michigan this week. She tried to implore Michigan lawmakers to schedule a revote. We can talk about the wisdom of that. It didn't happen.
But, coming forward, there's still no resolution of this. It's back in the hands of the Democratic National Committee.
FOREMAN: Donna, is it absolutely going to be a case where Democrats, the Florida and Michigan people, are left out, or do you think, in the end, they will be folded in somehow, and, if so, how, now that revotes seem to be off the table?
BRAZILE: I think that the rules and bylaws committee, which will meet next week, will try to figure out a way to bring them back into the family.
The people clearly want to vote. They may not vote in the numbers that were reflected in the primaries in January. But I do believe that the rules and bylaws committee can come up with a formula, a fair allocation of delegates, and encourage the candidates to work with us...
(CROSSTALK)
FOREMAN: How can either side agree to anything other than a 50/50 split?
BRAZILE: I think that was a nonstarter for Senator Clinton.
But the other nonstarter is to count the delegates that were illegally, you know, cast. And that's not what we're going to do. I think we will vote to give both candidates a fair apportion of delegates and to encourage them to work to bring the party together.
FOREMAN: And, Jeff, out there on the trail with Obama right now, they see McCain running around the world and acing presidential right now. To what degree to the McCain (sic) people think, we're going to win this nomination; we need to get this over with, because, every day that we're not, he is putting distance between us and the White House?
ZELENY: Well, I think the Obama campaign, you saw one thing they were doing this week.
They're no longer doing these big rallies and giant rallies that really have sustained his candidacy. Three days in a row, Senator Obama was giving a presidential-like speech. He had a backdrop of American flags and sometimes an audience. He was giving a speech into a teleprompter.
He is already looking ahead to Senator McCain, but he's also looking at Senator Clinton. So right now the Obama campaign is really running a two-front strategy, one, trying to win the nomination, but also the general election.
Senator Obama stopped by West Virginia this week. And it was as though it was almost in September or October. We don't know if he's going to win the nomination, of course, but he was making a very tough general election argument.
So, one of the upsides perhaps of this long campaign is that both Senator Clinton and Senator Obama are going to a lot of places that they may have to go after the convention, whoever becomes the nominee.
(CROSSTALK)
FOREMAN: ... upside is, it gives us an awful lot to talk about. And so we're out of time.
ZELENY: True.
FOREMAN: Jeff, thanks so much, Donna as well.
Still ahead: What's the proper thing to do when caught in a political sex scandal?
And a quick quiz. Who was called the Kansas Cyclone and why? That answer is coming up later.
But our weekly political sideshow is up right now.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
FOREMAN (voice-over): Way down yonder in the Bayou State, voters are yucking it up over a prank call. A Republican candidate for Congress in Louisiana has released her own version of Hillary Clinton's red phone ad.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hello. Hillary Clinton.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hillary, this is Lorinda Cormoin (ph). What the heck are you doing trying to raise taxes on my constituents?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you know what time its is? (END VIDEO CLIP)
FOREMAN: A guy in Southern California is looking to make a quick buck off of his breakfast. He swears his toaster produced a spitting image of Senator Barack Obama. And like any other incredibly unique freak of nature, it's for sale on eBay. He says that someone from the Clinton campaign already came by his house and tried to buy it for 20 bucks.
And the Florida state Senate is the butt of all jokes this week, as lawmakers passed a bill that could lead to suspensions and even expulsions for students wearing overly baggy pants to school. However, two state senators proposed an amendment that would have exempted students who are -- quote -- "studying refrigerator repair or plumbing."
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
FOREMAN (voice-over): This week marked five years since the invasion of Iraq. There were protests, of course, not very big ones, but they did have music. So, we will roll a bit for you. The president still had no doubt.
BUSH: The answers are clear to me. Removing Saddam Hussein from power was the right decision.
FOREMAN: John McCain has made the war in Iraq a focal point of his campaign.
MCCAIN: I can tell you unequivocally that the situation has improved dramatically over the last year.
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: One, two, three, four, we don't want your oil war.
FOREMAN: The Democratic candidates are criticizing the war, of course, and promising its end.
OBAMA: Are we safer because of this war? And that is why Senator McCain can argue, as he did last year, that we couldn't leave Iraq because violence was up, and then argue this year that we can't leave Iraq because violence is down.
CLINTON: I believe the best way to get the Iraqis to move to take responsibility is for us to end their blank check.
FOREMAN: And, finally, the vice president had his own unique point of view.
MARTHA RADDATZ, ABC NEWS: Let me go back to the Americans. Two- thirds of Americans say it's not worth fighting. And they're looking at the value gained vs. the cost in American lives, certainly, and Iraqi lives.
RICHARD B. CHENEY, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: So?
RADDATZ: So, you don't care what the American people think?
CHENEY: No, I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
FOREMAN: Who would have believed a year ago that the war in Iraq would have been anything but an albatross around the neck of the Republican candidate? But John McCain has made Iraq the keystone for his presidential campaign. And it could be what puts him over the top.
Is all this due to real changes on the ground in Iraq or just smoke and mirrors?
There's no one who cuts through the smoke better than CNN's Michael Ware. He joins us now from Baghdad.
Michael, the Democrats continue to say, look, we need to get out as cleanly as we can. The Republicans continue to say, we need to stay until the job is successfully accomplished. Is either one possible?
MICHAEL WARE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's a very difficult question to answer, obviously. But the short answer is, no, not without some significant change. Any sense of withdrawal is just beyond the pale (ph). I mean, we always steal the magic wand that could be waved over this blood-soaked country and fix all that ails it, but I'm afraid that just doesn't exist.
For right or for wrong and for whatever reason, America began this war. And one way or another for America's own foreign policy interests, and for those of this region and the Iraqi people, America must bring it to some kind of resolution. Now, should it be continued in the way that it's going now? That's a matter also of great debate.
In many ways, America's never really fought this war. It's always done it with its arm tied behind its back. And with the surge or without the surge, there's still an 800-pound gorilla in the room that's yet to be addressed, and I've yet to see America establish a coherent strategy to tackle. And that's the fact that Iran all but owns this country. It certainly has greater influence.
This government is much more closely aligned to Iran. And Iran strategically is using this country as a quagmire to punish America, to torture its great enemy, being the U.S. here on one of its own battlefields close to home. So none of these policies that I'm hearing espoused address the underlying true dynamics of this war now.
FOREMAN: One of the things the Democrats are saying is that they think the only reason there's any political progress, slow as it may be in Iraq right now, is because the Iraqis fear that a Democrat will take the White House and will pull out. Is that true?
WARE: Look, anyone who postulates in that fashion honestly must be dreaming. Now, this Iraqi government might know that it doesn't exactly have a handle on everything. But to be honest, I think this Iraqi government is more afraid of American money pulling out than it is of American troops. I mean, particularly if you talk to the hard liners in this government who were trained, funded, indoctrinated and continue to be supported by Iran.
Let's not forget, many of the major factions of this government certainly the most powerful ones, and their paramilitary wings continue to this day to have connections to Tehran, if in fact those parties and organizations were not actually created in Tehran, while in exile from Saddam's rule.
So these people, if you speak to them like the ambassador from Iran here in Baghdad, say America, get out of the way. Give us the security far less they call it. Basically give us the responsibility for security. Let us fix this.
And if you want to give us the weapons we want, Iran certainly will. So the threat of a U.S. troop withdrawal is not as real as perhaps many people back home in the states would like to believe -- Tom.
FOREMAN: Thanks so much, Michael Ware, for that update.
Religion has never been more alive in the United States. Just look at this weekend. People all across this country are praying. Praying that their teams will make it to the Sweet 16 in the NCAA tournament. We will get serious about religion and its role when THIS WEEK IN POLITICS continues.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MUSIC: What if God was one of us, just a slob like one of us, just a stranger on a bus trying to make his way home?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(NEWSBREAK)
FOREMAN: Barack Obama holds hands and prays before most speeches, and Hillary Clinton talks openly about the prayer warriors who support her on the campaign trail. These examples come from an article in this week's "Time" magazine written by nation editor Amy Sullivan.
She's the author of "The Party Faithful: How and Why Democrats are Closing the God Gap." Also joining me is Mark Rozell, public policy professor at George Mason University. He's done a good deal of study on the conservative Republican side of the faith equation.
Welcome to both of you on this very religious weekend for a great many Americans. Let me start off with you. To what degree are the Democrats closing this gap?
AMY SULLIVAN, "TIME" MAGAZINE: Well, there are two gaps you're talking about. One is really looking at the voting numbers particularly from 2004. When we saw that the more you attended church, the more likely you were to vote Republican, and the same that those voters who least attended church were more likely to vote for Democrats. But there's also an image gap here.
The sense that over the last 20 or 30 years we've developed that if you're a Republican, you must be religious, and if you're a Democrat, you must be hostile to religion or want religion out of the public square. And that really has just shrunk incredibly over the last few years.
If you look at the campaign right now, John McCain, the Republican nominee, is the one who has the religious right criticizing him. He's the one who's had religious advisers quit because they said they were being taken for granted. Whereas, it's the two Democrats still in the race who are really very comfortable talking about their faith, and have very sophisticated religious outreach operations.
FOREMAN: You've made the point in your own research and writing that the Democrats really abandon a battlefront here that they didn't need to abandon. They could have done stronger on it all along. Why did they back away?
MARK ROZELL, GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY: Well, I think part of is just the Democratic Party philosophy that somehow it's unseemly to wear your religiosity on your sleeve out in the open about such things. It's considered kind of a private matter, and it's also a function of Democrats feeling more so than Republicans, I think, that it's OK that people come to the table with different viewpoints, and we should all sort of accept everybody else's different religious point of view.
Whereas, if you look at the conservative Christian side of the Republican Party, you have a lot of activists who feel very, very fervently about their religiosity and, of course, evangelicals believe that it's important to proselytize. That's just a foundation of their own belief system.
So for a long time, I think, Democrats just wanted to stay in the background when it came to faith and politics because they felt it's just not appropriate to push your religion on others. But I think, as Amy was saying, by the 2004 election, a lot of Democrats really realized that it was a political liability to be conceding the entire landscape of values issues and discussion to the Republicans.
FOREMAN: So what type of values voters are up for grabs here? The Democrats certainly aren't going to get the hard right people, the very conservative Christians. Which ones are they after?
SULLIVAN: Well, they're not going to get the hard right, mostly fundamentalists or very conservative evangelicals. But there are a lot of voters in play in the middle there. For instance, we've seen just among white evangelicals, the party identification has really shifted since 2004. And in 2004, about 50 percent of white evangelicals were registered Republicans. Now, it's down to 40 percent, and that's really being driven by younger evangelicals who are becoming independents and in many cases becoming democrats.
FOREMAN: How much does the Democratic Party have to wrestle with the issues? However, you pointed out when John Kerry was campaigning, there were some people who showed up who said we're pro-life for John Kerry. And the Kerry campaign was very uneasy about this. It seems to me the Democratic Party will have to wrestle with those issues if they want to get those voters.
SULLIVAN: Exactly. Well, they need to do a better job of coming to grips with the fact that they already have pro-life voters within the party. About a third of democratic voters are pro-life. So it is obviously not an obstacle, necessarily for people who have pro-life views, to vote for Democratic candidates.
But I think Republicans do a much better job of at least leaving an opening for pro-choice voters. They certainly don't use pro-choice rhetoric, but they don't pander to the base the way the Democrats do.
FOREMAN: And certainly on the Republican side, they also have to be looking at these kind of people, especially if you have John McCain looking at that big moderate middle.
ROZELL: That's right. That's right. Well, there's the dilemma for John McCain because he's had traditionally a very difficult relationship with the religious conservatives in the Republican Party. And, of course, because of their lack of enthusiasm for him, he's doing a lot of outreach to try to secure that important base in the Republican Party voting machine.
But at the same time, if he's perceived as reaching out too much to them and pandering in effect to many of their principles that are outside the "mainstream," then he risks losing that big political middle in the general election. So he's got to do a really tough balancing act between his need to reach out to those independent voters who are not terribly fond of the religious right while at the same time securing his religious conservative base.
FOREMAN: Are those people in the middle religious people, or are they people who are more casual about religion?
ROZELL: They're certainly less intense about religion than the evangelical conservatives when we talk about the religious conservative movement, for example, but they're still religious people. I mean, this is a country where if you look at the Pew survey data, for example, you see overwhelmingly Americans believe in God or believe in a higher power, that this is a nation of believers, of course. But not everybody is as intense in their religiosity.
FOREMAN: We'll have to see which candidate they believe in. Thanks to you both for being here. We appreciate it.
ROZELL: Thank you. FOREMAN: In just a moment, we'll go from the sublime to the ridiculous I'm afraid. Yes, yes, there had been more sex scandals in THIS WEEK IN POLITICS. Stick with us.
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JON STEWART, HOST, "THE DAILY SHOW WITH JON STEWART": New York swore in its new governor yesterday, David Paterson. And obviously, his first day was somewhat, I guess, typical. He swore into the office. He moves his stuff into the governor's mansion and announced that he had engaged in multiple extramarital affairs during a troubled time in his marriage. What the (EXPLETIVE DELETED)?
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(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
FOREMAN: Previously on THIS WEEK IN POLITICS --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm too sexy for my love, too sexy for my love, love's going to leave me.
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FOREMAN: This was a very weird week on the political sexapalooza tour with more confessions and admissions than a whole season of "Law & Order: SVU." So as a public service, we here at THIS WEEK IN POLITICS have decided to answer some questions about modern political etiquette.
Question number one: How long should you wait after replacing a public official driven from the office by scandal before revealing your own, well, scandal?
Apparently, the answer is right after being sworn in. Only hours into his first day in office, the new New York governor admitted that both he and his wife had strayed during their marriage. Straying, it should be noted, does not seem to be as serious as what former Governor Eliot Spitzer was doing.
Which brings us to the second question. Speaking of the former governor, when is it no longer proper to show pictures of the young lady involved? Well, it seems to be when her lawyers start demanding tens of thousands of dollars for each picture, which is what they're doing now, which is why we're not showing them to you.
She was also facing allegations that she may have appeared in a well-known series of college girl skin videos. But now, it's not clear if she was 18 years old at that time. So we're not showing you those either.
Question number three: How do you know if your husband is gay? Well, in the case of former New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey and his wife and a former campaign aide, the answer appears to depend on which of the three people allegedly in bed together was allegedly having sex with whom. I know it gets complicated. Mrs. McGreevey is suing for divorce on the grounds that her husband was gay and he hid that fact from her, and she's disputing accounts from her husband and the aide that all three of them shared more than campaign strategies.
Question four: Finally, when is it time to admit a clandestine relationship and simply quit? Well, perhaps never. The Mayor of Detroit has had his romantic text messages published in the paper. He appears to have been less than forthcoming when he denied the affair while under oath. And this week, the city council voted 7-1 for him to step down. Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's reaction --
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MAYOR KWAME KILAPTRICK (D), DETROIT: My reaction is OK, now since it's over, it has no effect. It's not binding. Let's get back to work.
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FOREMAN: So, I guess what he really loves is his job. And speaking of a man who loves his job, CNN's Bill Schneider is ready to fast break his way through everything you need to know to survive the next week in politics. Our "Fast Track" is coming right up.
And another quick quiz. Which politician scored a record 58 points in an NCAA consolation game? We'll have the answer after a quick TV time-out.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
FOREMAN: It's time for our Fast Track." Everything you need to know to survive the next week in politics. And what better way than to jump on the CNN Election Express up in Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love, with our senior political analyst Bill Schneider standing by.
Bill, what do we expect from the big Pennsylvania vote we keep talking about?
WILLIAM SCHNEIDER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Oh, the expectations game. Well, Hillary Clinton is expected to win, in fact, do very well here. She's way ahead by double digits in the polls, and she's got the support of all the big Democratic players, the governor, the mayors of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.
What's Obama doing? He's driving up those expectations. He's saying she's going to win big here. Meanwhile, he's registering an awful lot of voters in Pennsylvania. If he wins Pennsylvania, he's very likely to get the nomination.
FOREMAN: If Pennsylvania is so important, then why are the candidates not spending more time there? They're spending time in Indiana, West Virginia and other places.
SCHNEIDER: Because if Hillary Clinton does win as expected, the race will go on. She's trying to overtake Barack Obama's lead in popular votes and in pledged delegates, and she's got to go everywhere to do that, and he's got to go everywhere to match her.
FOREMAN: Things still look terrible at the White House these days. The president's approval rating about 31 percent. That's just absolutely awful. What does that do for John McCain?
SCHNEIDER: It ought to doom John McCain because he's the Republican nominee, but that's where the big surprise comes in. In the polls, our poll and others, he's neck and neck with Hillary Clinton and with Barack Obama for the November vote.
It appears that voter do not directly link John McCain with the Bush administration. The task of the Democrats in their campaign is going to be to argue that if John McCain wins the presidency, it will be equivalent to a third term for George Bush.
FOREMAN: And Bill, here's the truly critical question. Who are the candidates picking for their NCAA tournament winners?
SCHNEIDER: Well, as I recall, Barack Obama says he's leaning towards North Carolina, which puts him in company with John McCain who also picked North Carolina. By the way, that's the next big primary state after Pennsylvania.
Hillary Clinton says she's going to defer to her husband who went to Georgetown. She favors Georgetown. Actually, I don't believe her own alma mater would be a good bet. She went to Wellesley.
FOREMAN: Bill, I'll let you go. You're going to run up those steps back there like Rocky. Thanks for joining us. And now, it's time to shift to our "Late Night Laughs."
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DAVID LETTERMAN, HOST, "LATE SHOW WITH DAVID LETTERMAN": There was one bit of good news for the economy earlier today. At the last minute, a large investment bank was rescued at the last minute. It was adopted by Angelina Jolie. So that's --
JAY LENO, HOST, "THE TONIGHT SHOW WITH JAY LENO": David Paterson was sworn in as the new governor of New York. He is legally blind as opposed to outgoing governor, Eliot Spitzer, who's really, really short sighted.
CONAN O'BRIEN, HOST, "LATE NIGHT WITH CONAN O'BRIEN": It's now being reported that the former governor of New Jersey took part in several threesomes involving his wife and his chauffeur. Yes, yes. So it's your move, Spitzer.
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FOREMAN: We are well aware that THIS WEEK IN POLITICS is really this week in college basketball. And without revealing my own abysmal picks from the final four, we thought we'd bring you our list of the most athletic politicians to ever lead a fast break to Washington. Dwight Eisenhower's combination of guts and hustle earned him the nickname "The Kansas Cyclone" when he played football for West Point.
Gerald Ford was a star center at Michigan. All rumors to the contrary, he did not play without a helmet.
The captain of Yale's 1947 baseball team, George H.W. Bush, took his team to the college World Series losing to the University of California.
Ronald Reagan played a little football at Eureka College in the 1920s, but his star role was as the Gipper on the silver screen.
And finally, Senator Bill Bradley never made it to the White House. But no one who watched will ever forget how he led underdog Princeton to the final four in 1965. Yes, Michigan took the top prize but the Tigers took second as Bradley nailed a record 58 points against Wichita State.
Maybe we should have brackets instead of primaries. That's it for THIS WEEK IN POLITICS. I'm Tom Foreman.
Thanks for watching.
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