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American Morning
President's First 100 Day Mix of Successes and Failures
Aired April 30, 2001 - 11:31 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.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: The White House is picking up the lunch tab for members of Congress today; a live picture there. Today's White House luncheon will formally mark President Bush's first 100 days in office. Now, all 535 members of Congress have been invited, but some members on both sides of the aisle, won't be there. In some cases, it's a simple matter of scheduling conflicts. But apparently, some Democrats are not showing up because they're unhappy with the president's approach to issues like the environment and tax cuts.
Well, on this idea that it's 100 days, the first 100 days of President Bush's term in office, we invited Bill Schneider, our senior political analyst, to stop by. Bill, good morning, good to see you.
WILLIAM SCHNEIDER, CNN SR. POLITICAL ANALYST: Good morning, Daryn.
KAGAN: Let's take a look, as you see it, at how the president has done. We're going to break it down into some categories here. Let's look at his successes; first, on the domestic front.
SCHNEIDER: I think the biggest success on the domestic front, surprisingly, is the tax cut. It's gotten authorization by both houses of Congress. It was at the top of his agenda. He managed to get it through, even though there was not a lot of public pressure behind it.
Now, of course, you remember that the Senate slashed the size of that tax cut. Nevertheless, there is going to be a big tax cut. The only question is how big?
KAGAN: So, not as big as the president had pushed for, but a lot of bigger than the Democrats were talking about during the presidential campaign.
SCHNEIDER: Absolutely, the Democrats moved a lot closer to the president than he had move towards them.
KAGAN: On the international front, the president in his first 100 days faced what many didn't want to call a crisis, but definitely a challenge in getting those 24 crewmembers out of China.
SCHNEIDER: That's right. I think his biggest international success has to be the China standoff. He reassured people in the United States and abroad by his calm and firm resolution of the crisis. He did not do anything rash. He got the crew back. There is very little lingering resentment in the United States over the fact that the United States apologized to China. By two-to-one, Americans say that the United States, rather than China, was the winner of that showdown.
KAGAN: Turning now, Bill, to things that have not gone as well for President Bush in his first 100 days. Domestically, he's made some environmental choices that a lot of people have been critical of.
SCHNEIDER: That's right. I think like many other conservatives, the president underestimated the degree of environmental sensitivity among the American public. Arsenic in the drinking water became a symbol of that, when he tried to change the regulations that the Clinton administration had put out and then he spent the last couple of weeks backtracking and trying to establish his environmental credentials.
I think the Republican Congress discovered that back in 1995, and now the Republican president has discovered that Americans are deeply committed to public health and safety when it comes to the environment.
KAGAN: And then on the international front, it's been the environment as well; a move that the president made that wasn't too pleasing to many allies.
SCHNEIDER: That's right. I was in Europe last week, and they were very critical of the president, and the main argument, the main issue they held against him was his repudiation of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming. That's a much bigger issue overseas than it is in the United States because they've just gone through their worst winter ever for flooding. I think they were shocked when President Bush said he won't do anything that might risk damaging the American economy. To a lot of people overseas, that sounded like America first.
KAGAN: And any other impressions you took from your time overseas about how they view President Bush?
SCHNEIDER: I think the president bush is widely ridiculed and parodied overseas. I know there's a poll of the British which shows that the majority of people in Britain have a negative opinion of President Bush, just the reverse of Americans. He's often portrayed as a kind of Dan Quayle figure.
I think the prevalent criticism is that he is a unilateralist, which is a big word but what it means is unlike Bill Clinton, this president says the United States -- they believe he says the United States is going to go it alone. He makes them very nervous because on Kyoto, on the Balkans, on the Middle East, he hasn't consulted with allies. He is going to give a very important speech on missile defense tomorrow and we'll see what he has to say about that other very controversial issue.
KAGAN: We will do that. Bill Schneider in Washington, thanks for stopping by.
SCHNEIDER: My pleasure.
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