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American Morning

Senator Joe Lieberman Loses Democratic Primary; Israel Going Ahead With Plans to Expand Offensive in Lebanon

Aired August 09, 2006 - 09:30   ET

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

TONY HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Connecticut Democrat Joe Lieberman will file today to run as an independent in November. The 18-year senator lost the Democratic primary to anti-war candidate Ned Lamont. So just how did Lieberman lose the election?
Mark Pazdiokos has been covering this story for "The Hartford Courant" and he joins us this morning from Hartford.

Mark, good to talk to you.

MARK PAZNIOKAS, "HARTFORD COURANT": Good morning.

HARRIS: Well, I don't want to start this morning, Mark, with the guy who did not win the race. Tell me why Ned Lamont won, and then I will let you listen to why he thinks he won.

PAZNIOKAS: You can't explain why Ned Lamont won without starting with the guy who lost the race.

HARRIS: Ah, there you go. Very good. So tell us why.

PAZNIOKAS: Yes, the poll -- I mean, the lay poll showed that the vote for Ned Lamont was very much a vote against Joe Lieberman. That's borne out by the polls and it was borne out by talking to voters yesterday. Ned Lamont is trying to portray this as a vote for his candidacy. But a significant element is it's still an anti- Lieberman vote.

HARRIS: Do you think -- you follow this on the ground. Do you think Senator Lieberman had a real notion that as he was trying to, you know, build this bridge between Democrats and Republicans on this issue that he was causing real problems for himself at home?

PAZNIOKAS: Senator Lieberman, his actions over the past year from a political point of view have really been inexplicable. Senator Lieberman says he knew as early as 2003 when he was running for president in New Hampshire how powerful an issue the war was among Democratic voters and how much trouble he might potentially be in.

But since then, he has continued to be a strong defender of the war, speaking out at some key moments. He has been quoted by President Bush to defend his conduct of the war, which, of course, has infuriated Democratic voters who turned out in record numbers yesterday.

HARRIS: Mark, he said it was about conviction, so he went out and here is a politician, who said what he believed, and stood by his convictions. What does it say that this is a man after all of his years of service to that state, is essentially voted out, loses the primary?

PAZNIOKAS: It says a couple of things. I mean, obviously, the war is an incredibly potent issue here and elsewhere in the country. But Senator Lieberman really hadn't campaigned here in a dozen years. He's been a national figure. He was the vice presidential nominee in 2000, and he briefly ran for president a few years ago. He had grown disconnected from his base. You heard that time and time again over the past few months over the past few months traveling this state. That made him vulnerable.

If he had a stronger base, he may have survived being at odds with the party on the war. And the other piece of this, it wasn't just his convictions. It was how he went out and defended the president's conduct of the war.

You know, a key moment in this campaign was really last fall, after Congressman John Murtha, a conservative Democrat, got up and called for the withdrawal of U.S. troops. Twelve days later, Senator Lieberman had an op-ed piece in "The Wall Street Journal," and the headline was, "The Troops Must Stay." That infuriated Democrats here, and that really fueled the movement that led Ned Lamont to jump into the race. It was really about that time that Ned Lamont got together with Tom Swann, who became his campaign manager. He's a grass roots organizer in Connecticut, and it quickly went from there.

HARRIS: Yes. Well, you'll continue to cover it. There's more to report, that's for sure. Mark Pazniokas of the "Hartford Courant." Mark, thank you.

PAZNIOKAS: You're welcome.

HARRIS: And another election to tell you about. Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney is defeated in a runoff. Hank Johnson, a former county commissioner, beat McKinney 59 percent to 41 percent. During a post-election rally, McKinney sang along to the song "Dear, Mr. President." It's an anti-Bush anthem by the singer Pink. Take a listen.

(SINGING)

HARRIS: McKinney drew national headlines in March, as you may remember, after a confrontation with a Capitol Hill police officer. In last night's concession comments, she complained about electronic balloting.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MCKINNEY: Electronic voting machines are a threat to our democracy. So let the word go out -- we aren't going to tolerate any more stolen elections!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS: McKinney made no mention of her future political plans.

As we told you moments ago, Israel is going to go ahead with its plans to expand the offensive in Lebanon. The Israeli security cabinet approved the move just a few minutes ago. CNN's Matthew Chance is in northern Israel this morning.

Matthew, good morning.

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SR INTL. CORRESPONDENT: Good morning to you, Soledad.

It looks like a major change of tactics on the part of the Israel military, approving the security cabinet, an expansion of military activities inside Southern Lebanon. I can tell you that expansion on the ground already looks like it's under way, because in this position, from where I'm talking to you now, on the Israeli/Lebanese border, over the past few hours we've seen Israeli guns really open up and pound Hezbollah positions inside Southern Lebanon.

But also, Israeli troops move out of Israel, cross the border, in to Lebanon, backed by tanks and armored vehicles. A lot machine gun fire being held, a lot of explosions as well, in the towns and villages and on the hillsides right behind me. So it does look like this escalation, this major expansion of Israeli military operations, is now fully under way. It's been a very tough battle so far. The operations that have been conducted across South Lebanon for the past several weeks have taken a heavy toll. Hezbollah is not an easy enemy to unsettle.

O'BRIEN: Matthew Chance for us this morning. Matthew is in northern Israel. Thank you.

(WEATHER REPORT)

HARRIS: Still to come this morning, why are more and more college-bound teens getting burned out in high school? The author of a new book the overachievers joins us live. She'll have tips on keeping your kids from pushing and pushing and pushing.

O'BRIEN: Plus, controversial director Oliver Stone's got a new movie. It's called "World Trade Center." We'll tell you why some of the best reviews are coming from some very surprising sources. Those stories are ahead. We're back in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: It's an image none of us will ever be able to forget, the World Trade Center collapsing. Those terror attacks five years ago moving, I think it's fair to say, for everyone in this nation and around the world. Today there's a movie that is depicting that tragic day, and it's opening nationwide in theaters. Behind it is one of Hollywood's most controversial directors.

CNN's entertainment Brooke Anderson has more on this.

Good morning.

BROOKE ANDERSON, CNN ENTERTAINMENT CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Soledad.

O'BRIEN: Oliver Stone is the director.

ANDERSON: Oliver Stone, of course, is the director. It's been nearly five years since the attack on the World Trade Center, and today the movie "World Trade Center" opens in 2,500 theaters nationwide. But many are asking, is the subject matter too raw on many Americans' minds, and did Oliver Stone treat the sensitive story in the right manner?

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NICOLAS CAGE, ACTOR: OK, listen up. We got to evacuate the tower. Who's coming?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANDERSON: No one in Hollywood or anywhere else expected this would be an easy film to make, certainly not the actors.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I wanted to do right by the American people.

MAGGIE GYLLENHAAL, ACTRESS: I think it has been used by all sorts of people to further different political agendas. So that was also in my mind, too, as we began it, how to avoid that.

ANDERSON: Then there was the question of timing. One of the rescue workers whose experience is dramatized in World Trade Center defends its release this week.

WILL JIMENO, WTC SURVIVOR: People say, well, it's too soon, too soon. Well, when is not too soon, when all of us are gone and people are assuming what happened? We have the facts today, and we need to face reality.

ANDERSON: But it was the particular director who was taking on the 9/11 subject that sounded alarms, especially in conservative circles, when the project was announced last year, Oliver Stone, the pundits wondered, along with some of those there that day.

LT. JOHN KASSIMATIS, WTC SURVIVOR: I always felt that Oliver roamed in the field of fiction.

ANDERSON: Could the lightning rod behind politically charged pictures like "JFK" and "Born on the Fourth of July" tell a September 11th story and not give it his own liberal ideological spin?

OLIVER STONE, DIRECTOR: Conspiracy one-two movies -- you know, there's no one -- don't pigeonhole me, I guess is what I'm saying. I like to surprise you.

ANDERSON: Most surprising perhaps is the flurry of effusive reviews coming from very unexpected places, "The Washington Times" to "The Weekly Standard," a chorus of hosannas from conservative quarters. Columnists calling it "required viewing for every American." Family groups have turned Stone into an American artistic hero. The Parents Television Council is recommended it to its one million members, an honor usually reserved for religious films.

MELISSA CALDWELL, PARENTS' TELEVISION COUNCIL: It's pretty unusual for us to get behind a movie that enthusiastically. It's rare for Hollywood to produce a film, these days anyhow, of such epic proportions.

ANDERSON (on camera): Producers will contribute 10 percent of the five-day opening box office proceeds to several 9/11-related charities, including the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, which is raising money to build a $510 million memorial here at the Trade Center site. And Paramount, the studio backing the pictures, has posted no outdoor advertising in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

(voice-over): Meanwhile, at a studio-sponsored screening for families and survivors, some are still wrestling with whether they're ready.

MARTY SILVIO, WTC SURVIVOR: It's on the cutting edge of too soon and not too soon. I guess it's time. You know. It's time.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANDERSON: "World Trade Center" out today. Soledad, Oliver Stone said he wanted to make a story of courage and heroism. I saw the film, and I think he accomplished what he set out to do. While it is incredibly difficult to watch, I cried through the entire film. It's not only gripping and compelling, but it shows hope amidst despair. It shows human nature, human beings stepping up to help one another in a time of crisis, and that part of it is uplifting.

O'BRIEN: There are plenty of directors, I would imagine, who thought about doing this, and a lot don't, because of all the reasons you listed in the piece. What did Oliver Stone -- did he talk about what he was considering and thinking about and worried about before he made this movie?

ANDERSON: Absolutely. When he saw the script from Andrea Burlaf (ph), he said I have to make this, and he started pitching himself, I want to make this film, and you know, he was highly critical of the government, the administration right after the 9/11 attacks. So many people were concerned that he was going to force his own political agenda here. But he kept reiterating, he wanted to make a story true to the survivors, true to what happened, a story of inspiration, and he said he tried really hard, he did the best that he could, and he hopes that's what he did.

O'BRIEN: Sounds like many people are saying, you included, saying he did it.

ANDERSON: Yes, an individual decision, of course, if you want to go see it, though.

O'BRIEN: I think it's too tough. I don't know that I could see it.

ANDERSON: It's hard.

O'BRIEN: Thank you, Brooke. Appreciate it.

HARRIS: Soledad, I'm with you.

Let's get you now to the CNN Center in Atlanta. Daryn Kagan is there with a preview of today's "CNN LIVE TODAY."

Daryn, good morning.

DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning to you, Tony.

We're going to have the personal side of the Mideast crisis. That's coming up on LIVE TODAY.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I can feel it in my heart. I know he is still alive, because we have a special communication between us.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KAGAN: An Israeli soldier hostage to Hezbollah. Now his wife presses Americans to help get him home.

Personal finance. A look at credit cards that pay you, rewards cards. Gerri Willis will tell show you who's getting offers. You won't believe it, including my dog.

And yes, another scandal rattles the palace. Royals caught chatting. Did the tabloids listen in on Charles and Camilla's voice- mail messages?

For those stories and all the morning's breaking news, stay informed with "LIVE TODAY." I'll see you at the top of the how.

HARRIS: You didn't you say your dog, did you?

KAGAN: My dog has received a credit card offer from a major credit card company. We'll show it to you.

HARRIS: Maybe he's got good credit!

ANDY SERWER, "FORTUNE" MAGAZINE: G. Shepherd is his name, right?

(CROSSTALK)

HARRIS: All right, Daryn, thank you.

And up next, Andy "Minding Your Business." Hey, Andy.

ANDY SERWER, "FORTUNE" MAGAZINE: Hey, Tony.

Is it sizzling Cisco again? A high-flier from the 1990s might be back, but with some new stripes. Plus, figuring out who AOL's customers are. A couple reporters have been able to do that. And we'll tell you about it, coming up next on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: Think it's a good thing that your kid's pushing himself hard to get into a good college; that she's a self-starter, a hard worker juggling those A.P. classes and the SATs and all those extracurriculars?

Alexandra Robbins says that overachieving is leading to stressed out kids, and that that is becoming a national crisis. She's got a new book. It's called "The Overachievers: The Secret Life of Driven Kids."

Nice to see you. Thanks for talking with us.

ALEXANDRA ROBBINS, AUTHOR, "THE OVERACHIEVERS": Oh, thanks.

O'BRIEN: Tell me about the students you profiled.

ROBBINS: I profiled students perceived as everything from the meathead to the popular girl, the flirt to the workhorse. They're wonderful kids and I followed them three semesters -- they went to my old high school -- to see how they dealt with the pressure to succeed.

O'BRIEN: This was a high school in...

ROBBINS: It's a public high school in Maryland. However, I also talked to students across the country at other schools.

O'BRIEN: Is it because -- and these are relatively well-off students, you know...

ROBBINS: Not all of them. Not all of them.

O'BRIEN: But the bulk of them seem to be -- have some money and also have parents who are relatively involved, overinvolved in some cases that you profile. Why do you think overachieving is a bad thing? I think a lot of parents say I'd love for my kid to be focused on getting into a great college?

ROBBINS: Well, I think it's a myth that you need to get into a great college. Students are killing themselves trying to get into these schools. They're sleep deprived. They're going on two hours of sleep a night. They're stressed. They're sick. They're piling on too many activities. A lot them are becoming depressed. It's really gotten out of control.

O'BRIEN: Is the pressure coming from the parents, is the pressure coming from the high school like the one you attended? Is the pressure coming from the kids themselves?

ROBBINS: I think it's really more of a situation where it's a numbers game. You have more than 1.2 million students more apply to college in five years, and nearly 50 percent of college students had an A -- report having an A average in high school. What this means is that the education system turned from a place to love learning to a race to get ahead.

O'BRIEN: So that means, essentially, that it's much tougher to get into college than it was -- you're 99 years younger than me -- than it was even when you were getting into college and when I was getting into college?

ROBBINS: Absolutely.

O'BRIEN: Is it that nowadays it's not about necessarily just grades and extracurriculars. I mean, you have this fascinating piece. I want to run a little bit of it. A student is asked -- she's talking to her counselor, and the counselor says -- well, what would it take for me to get -- she asks the counselor, what would it take for me to get into Stanford? And the counselor says, well, you would have had to live in Mongolia for two years or been in a civil war. I mean, here's a smart girl who Stanford would be lucky to have.

ROBBINS: She had a 4.0.

O'BRIEN: She's not getting in.

ROBBINS: Yes, she -- and you know what? She's OK. The point is, you don't have to get into a school like that to succeed in the real world. But these magazine rankings, they're driving this frenzy among parents and students who feel like they have to gear their entire childhood and adolescent years into getting into particular schools.

O'BRIEN: Who is getting into these schools? I mean, if it's not a girl who's doing great and getting a 4.0 and who her counselor loves, you know, who is she losing out to?

ROBBINS: It's whomever the school needs. Sometimes they just need a French horn player for the school orchestra. These admissions decisions are not personal, and that's something that families need to realize.

O'BRIEN: I thought it was amazing what you talked about with the drugs. And we're not talking about -- when you think high schoolers and drugs -- pot, cocaine...

ROBBINS: No, those are on the decline.

O'BRIEN: ... alcohol. What are you talking about? ROBBINS: There's a rising black market now for ADD drugs, among non-ADD students who want to dope for tests. Doctors told me that even parents are trying to convince doctors to get their students drugged for finals.

O'BRIEN: So that -- and the idea would be that if they have ADD drugs they'll focus better in the test?

ROBBINS: They focus. They're universal enhancers. Doctors told me that they actually -- this isn't a tip for parents -- but they actually work. They actually help students to focus. It's awful that students feel that they need to consume substances illegally in order to do better in school.

O'BRIEN: What's the takeaway? I mean, you followed these kids for a while, and you follow them through the acceptance/rejection in some cases and how they do down the road a little bit. Overall, how did they turn out?

ROBBINS: You know what, overall, once the college admissions process was over, the students are doing fine. And you can read about how they are and how they feel about being in the book. I put some updates up on alexandrarobbins.com.

O'BRIEN: Alexandra Robbins. The book is called "The Overachievers: The Secret lives of Driven Kids." Got a girl carrying about 90 million things in her backup on the cover. It's a great book. Really, really interesting. Thanks for coming in to talk to us about it.

ROBBINS: Thank you so much.

O'BRIEN: Tony.

HARRIS: Still ahead at the top of the hour, the war bloggers.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When the war started, all of a sudden, everybody was blogging. You know? It was really out of nowhere. Everybody has a blog now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS: Call it an opinion. Perhaps it's therapy. Lebanese and Israelis share their feelings on the Internet. More AMERICAN MORNING, right after this.

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