How I Learned To Love Labor and Hate the Bomb
Issue 1 is the Senate's defeat of the nuclear test ban
treaty. Issue 2 is the AFL-CIO's endorsement of Al Gore. Issue 3 is campaign
finance reform.
The punditocracy splits over the political and
substantive fallout, if you will, of the Comprehensive [Nuclear] Test Ban
Treaty--which the Senate overwhelmingly defeated last week after President
Clinton had begged the GOP to delay the vote. Conservative pundits--such as
Robert Novak (NBC's Meet the Press and CNN's Capital Gang ), Brit Hume ( Fox News Sunday ), and Paul Gigot
(PBS's NewsHour With Jim Lehrer )--think the
defeat resulted from Clinton's hubris and the GOP's sound appraisal of the
national interest. Liberal pundits--such as Mark Shields ( NewsHour and Capital Gang ), Margaret
Carlson ( Capital Gang ), and Juan Williams
( Fox )--think the GOP is risking an arms race in
order to humiliate Clinton.
Some opinion makers, such as Steve Roberts (CNN's Late Edition ), think that the treaty's
defeat heralds a Buchananite lurch toward isolationism in the GOP. Moreover,
Alfonse D'Amato ( Fox ) and Juan Williams
( Fox ) think Clinton will inevitably win the
public relations war, given the public's overwhelming support for the treaty.
But conservatives such as Paul Gigot ( NewsHour )
and Tucker Carlson ( Late Edition ) counter that
many former foreign-policy advisers--including some Clinton appointees--opposed
the treaty, and that when it comes to foreign policy as a campaign issue,
Republicans still have the advantage. (On Capital
Gang , Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., notes that only one of the six
Republicans up for re-election next year voted for the treaty.) But even
Carlson thinks Al Gore's un-glitzy, pro-test-ban TV ad was smart, and Susan
Page ( Late Edition ) thinks Gore's pro-treaty
stance will help him with women voters (who worry about nuclear apocalypse more
than men) and Iowa Democrats (who have a lingering nuclear-freeze streak in
them from the 1980s). Only John McLaughlin (PBS's McLaughlin Group ) actually addresses whether we
still need to test nukes (McLaughlin thinks we do). (For more on the treaty
defeat, see "The Week/The Spin" and "International Papers.")
Most of the commentariat thinks that Al Gore's
endorsement by the AFL-CIO and the NEA represents a small victory. Labor, notes
Al Hunt ( Capital Gang ), is still a powerful
organizing tool in Iowa. Nevertheless, many pundits point out that the
Teamsters and the UAW have not yet endorsed Gore, and that Bill Bradley now has
as much money as Gore does. And many also criticize the vice president for
telling the Washington Post that he might not seek any campaign assistance
from Clinton; that may be a smart strategy in the general election, say Susan
Estrich ( Fox ) and D'Amato, but Clinton can still
energize the Democratic base during the primary season. (To read Estrich's
"Dialogue" on Flytrap, click here.)
A few programs discuss John McCain and the prospects for campaign finance
reform. On Meet the Press , Sen. Robert
Torricelli, D-N.J., says he opposes McCain's reform bill because it's too weak,
while Sen. McConnell says it's too strong. David Broder ( Meet the Press ) and Sam Donaldson (ABC's This Week ) would like to change
the system, but neither knows exactly how. ("One generation's reform is
another's problem," Broder observes of the current Watergate-era laws.) DNC
Chairman Ed Rendell argues that without soft money, the Democrats wouldn't have
a prayer against George W. Bush. George Stephanopoulos ( This Week ) notes that the more McCain's Senate colleagues
ostracize him for his crusade against "corruption," the more popular a
presidential candidate he's likely to become.
Department of Self-Plagiarism
Hewing to the journalistic dictum to "sell every piece
twice," Mark Shields has perfected the art of recycling his own sound bites.
Here's a sample from the past two weeks:
[The treaty vote] was, to put it bluntly,
impeachment. Betty Currie's name was never mentioned; [an] obstruction of
justice charge was never ventilated. There was no chief justice of the United
States sitting in the Senate, but that's what it was. It was Impeachment Two.
It was getting even with the president.
-- NewsHour , 10/15
The reality is very simple. This was not with
Betty Currie in the room or not with Bill Rehnquist sitting up there, [but] it
was nothing less than Impeachment Two. And that was their chance of getting
even.
-- Capital Gang ,
10/16
He had as good a week this week as I've ever seen
a non-incumbent presidential candidate have in New York. He spent repeated time
in the company of minority groups. He's comfortable there. This is something
that most presidential Republican nominees don't do except in a week when the
Democrats are holding their convention and there aren't that many cameras
around. He does it, he does it easily, comfortably. He brought together George
Pataki, the governor, and Rudy Giuliani.
-- NewsHour , 10/8
Let me just say I have never seen a candidate for
president in my lifetime who was not the nominee of his party have a better
week than George W. Bush had. He goes to New York, he makes two minority
community appearances. Usually the Republican nominees do their minority
appearances during the Democratic convention when there are no families around.
He's comfortable, he does it repeatedly. He has--he brings Giuliani and Pataki
together.
-- Capital Gang , 10/9
Last Word
From Capital Gang :
Sen. Mitch
McConnell: If you're going to call the Senate corrupt, if you're going
to call the members of the Senate corrupt, you need to prove it.
Soft money goes to political parties. Political parties
don't have a vote. Soft money is everything that isn't hard money--let me
finish my answer. It finances issue discussion in this country. The
New York Times , for example, has had 114
editorials on campaign finance reform since the beginning of 1997. That's about
one every nine days. They are a corporate soft money issue advocacy outfit, as
is this [party] program financed by corporate soft money.
[McCain's campaign-finance] proposal would single out
six committees, the DNC, the national Democratic committees, the national
Republican committees, and say, "Only those six can't engage in issue advocacy.
Everybody else in America will be doing it but us."
Mark Shields:
That's the last word, Mitch McConnell. I just have to say in closing, I've
learned tonight that the millions of dollars the Democrats have received from
the teachers had nothing to do with the Democrats' opposition to vouchers. I
guess Republicans alone of all our citizens are in--
McConnell: Maybe
there were already opposed to that.
Shields: No,
politicians are impervious and indifferent to large [amounts of money]--
Al Hunt: It's a
wonderful, clean system.
Margaret Carlson:
What a great country.
