Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Saturday Morning News

Interview With Ron Brownstein

Aired October 13, 2001 - 10:22   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.
JEANNE MESERVE, CNN ANCHOR: Joining us now is Ron Brownstein, esteemed political writer for the "Los Angles Times" to talk about the president's address this morning and more.

Thanks a lot for coming in.

RON BROWNSTEIN, "THE LOS ANGELES TIMES": Good morning, Jeanne.

MESERVE: First, we've just heard this report from Jamie McIntyre that Pentagon officials now say a U.S. bomb did go astray, did hit a civilian area of Kabul. How could this reverberate and affect the U.S. efforts?

BROWNSTEIN: Well, it's a reminder. There are really two totally distinct kinds of risk in this military operation and one is the danger to our own forces and one is the danger that it'll produce too many civilian casualties.

Inevitably, there are going to be some in any kind of military conflict. But obviously, the administration is very concerned to keep that number now as far as it can so as to not inflame sentiments in the Muslim world against this operation and against the United States, which is exactly what bin Laden wants.

MESERVE: Now, we heard President Bush this morning, in his radio address, hitting many of the same themes -- really, we've heard over and over again in the last few weeks. What's the point of this?

BROWNSTEIN: Well, you know, he's had a very different style of communication than most presidents, certainly, than Bill Clinton. Clinton used the radio addresses on Saturday as to try to make news, to offer new proposals that would get into the headlines of the Sunday newspapers.

But President Bush really throughout his career, even as governor, has had a very different style of communicating with the public. He seems to take a few issues, a few themes and focus on them over and over again even if the media feels like it is repetitive. His feeling is it's a chance to sort of get through and to control the agenda. And he's adapting that domestic style now to foreign policy.

MESERVE: How has this changed Bush's president overall?

BROWNSTEIN: Oh, big ways. I mean in at least three big respects. Like Clinton in '92, Bush ran in 2000 mostly as a domestic policy president. He was going to focus on education and faith-based charities. One of his biggest slip-ups in the campaign came in the fall of '99 when a Boston television station asked him a pop quiz to name a series of world leaders and he couldn't it. Now, he's speed dialing all of those guys before breakfast. So in that way, it's making a foreign policy president out of something that probably thought he was going to focus on domestic policy.

Secondly, the big criticism of Bush in the first eight months of his presidency both at home and abroad was that he was someone who was acting in a unilateral fashion, whether on the ABM Treaty, the Kyoto Global Warming Treaty or the tax bill at home, that he was -- had a kind of my way or the highway approach that he was criticized for. This is forcing him to be much more of a coalition builder at home and abroad.

And the third thing, Jeanne, is what we touched on before. Bush really did have a more diminished view of the bully pulpit than most presidents. He didn't' really see himself trying to insert himself into the life of the nation on an ongoing basis that way. This has forced him to become communicator in chief.

Finally, September 11 probably was the day that ended the Election of 2000 after all the dispute, all the controversy about whether he was legitimate as president. If nothing else, this has ended that question. He is President of the United States for all people. As Al Gore said himself when he went to Iowa a couple of weeks ago, "George Bush is my commander in chief."

MESERVE: And Ron Brownstein, we have to leave it there.

BROWNSTEIN: All right.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com