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March 21, 2006

Special Report Roundtable - March 21

FOX News Special Report With Brit Hume

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

THOMAS: Why did you really want to go to war? From the moment you stepped into the White House, from your cabinet, formed of cabinet officers, intelligent people and so forth, what was your real reason?

BUSH: I think your premise, in all due respect to your question and to you as a life-long journalist, that, you know, I didn't want war. To assume I wanted war is just flat wrong, Helen, in all due respect. No, hold on for a second, please. Excuse me, excuse me. No president wants war.

I'm never going to forget the vow I made to the American people that we will do everything in our power to protect our people. Part of that meant to make sure that we didn't allow people to provide safe haven to an enemy, and that's why I went into Iraq.

Hold on for a second...

THOMAS: (INAUDIBLE)...

BUSH: Excuse me for a second, please. Excuse me for a second. They did. The Taliban provided safe haven for al Qaeda. That's where al Qaeda trained...

THOMAS: They did not.

BUSH: Helen, excuse me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: And so it went. He went on. She did too a little bit.

Some analytical observations on this event today from Fred Barnes, the executive editor of "The Weekly Standard," Mort Kondracke, executive editor for "Roll Call," and Mara Liasson, national political correspondent of National Public Radio, FOX News contributors all.

Well, Helen Thomas wrote again today the president wrote (ph) as best he could, I suppose. Fred, you, like I, spent a fair amount of time around Helen Thomas as White House correspondents. Who benefits from exchanges like that, and who doesn't?

FRED BARNES, WEEKLY STANDARD: You know, there's an idea that a lot of Republican politicians have that complaining about the press really does you a lot of good. They're wrong. They're wrong. You just come off as a whiner, even if you're perfectly right in your complaints. But sparring with the press, now that's a different story. Bush -- today President Bush sparred with Helen Thomas, and I thought he came off very well. You know, he said nice things about her and so on.

HUME: Well, we didn't see any of that.

BARNES: Yeah, I know, but we did. He complimented her...

HUME: We didn't get to see him fully make his point about the Taliban gave sanction and haven to al Qaeda, and so, he argued, did Iraq.

BARNES: Brit, all that stuff is not going to be remembered. It will be remembered the president sparring with Helen Thomas after she didn't really ask any questions. She had three accusations is what she leveled (INAUDIBLE)...

HUME: Well, (INAUDIBLE) had a question, what was your real reason?

BARNES: OK, I know, but I mean, I mean, reporters are not supposed to fire accusations at the president or anybody else they are interrogating, and that was wrong.

MARA LIASSON, NPR: You know, whenever there's any kind of a contest or a contrast between the person at the podium in the White House briefing room and the press corps, the press corps generally loses, if that's the race that we're judging. I think that happened in this case, too.

However, just to get to the substance of this press conference, which I thought was pretty interesting. I think the president was continuing, kind of following up on the speeches, to show that, as he puts it, he's both optimistic and realistic about the prospects in Iraq. In other words, he's optimistic about success, but he's realistic about the problems. He understands why people are concerned. He's trying to show that he understands why Americans are pessimistic.

And he said something -- I think he made a little news today. He was asked if he could ever guarantee that there would come a time when there would be no U.S. troops in Iraq, and he said that was a subject for future presidents and future Iraqi leaders. And I think that was, you know, that was very, very candid on his part. We are staying there through 2008, if not longer.

HUME: Yes, but not with all -- necessarily with all the troops.

LIASSON: Certainly not, but no, but he didn't say anything about...

HUME: And we don't know whether it's going to be a fraction or what.

LIASSON: That's right, we don't, but I thought that was pretty realistic and honest.

MORT KONDRACKE, ROLL CALL: He signaled that at least through his term, he anticipates that there will be American troops in Iraq, which is information that we didn't have before, that that's his view of the way things are going to go.

There were other news in the press conference. Don Rumsfeld is going to stay. There's not going to be a big shakeup in the White House staff. Maybe somebody will be added, but no big shakeup. And I thought he had a politically good answer to the question about impeachment and censure. He stuck it to the Democrats, saying do they -- none of them really wants to get rid of this NSA spying program, but if they do, let's hear it, you know, let's hear it in the next election.

And on that point, I think that he couldn't have made this point because it's involved in a trial right now, but in the penalty phase of the Moussaoui trial, what is coming out is that the FBI bosses didn't let the subordinates in Minnesota look into Moussaoui's computer because they were afraid of getting in trouble with the FISA court. Now, this is -- so no wonder Bush goes around the FISA court in order to get this done, in order to go to prevent the same kind of thing happening in the instance of another 9/11. He could not have made that case because it's a judicial matter, but, boy, that's a powerful argument against the Feingolds of this country.

BARNES: You know, that case had already been made outside of court, and we already knew it, that they wouldn't let him go into the computer, Moussaoui's computer.

Can I go back to Helen Thomas a minute?

HUME: Yes.

BARNES: Because I think this is important. She made three accusations. She started out by saying Bush had caused the deaths of thousands of Americans and Iraqis by authorizing the invasion of Iraq. I mean, she could have -- it's also true that he saved -- you could say he saved the lives of thousands of Iraqi children who were being starved and allowed to die because Saddam Hussein was using the oil-food money -- oil- for-food money that was supposed to save them, he was using it to build resorts and military stuff. But she didn't. It was an accusation.

Then she said that every reason he'd ever offered for going into Iraq turned out to be false. Well, that's not right. He gave all kinds of reasons. He said it was a horrible tyranny that invades its neighbors and so on; it had ties to terrorists. All those things are true. He cited those. And then she said this, that Iraq didn't do anything to you or to our country. Another accusation. Well, maybe she hadn't heard that Saddam tried to assassinate President Bush's father when he was in Kuwait. And many other things...

HUME: He was shooting at American airplanes all the time.

BARNES: Here's my point: A reporter sitting on the front row at a White House press conference making accusations, and that is I think unprofessional and improper. And I'd like to know whether they agree or not.

KONDRACKE: I do, of course I do. It was an accusatory question with -- but Bush knew what he was going to get from Helen Thomas. I mean, she is -- she's actually said that he's the worst president ever. She's notoriously anti-Israeli, and you know, and been against this war all the way along.

HUME: And she has also said that he's the worst president in American history.

KONDRACKE: Right.

HUME: So what...

LIASSON: He called on her. He called on her.

HUME: So what do you think (INAUDIBLE)...

LIASSON: I go back to my point -- I go back to my point from the beginning. Whenever you set up a contrast between the person at the podium, and especially the president, with the White House press corps...

BARNES: But that's not the question here. You would never accuse the president of things and ask questions ...

(CROSSTALK)

LIASSON: Let me tell you something, Helen Thomas has not been called on I think in a presidential conference for quite a long time.

HUME: Well, remember, she's a columnist and...

(CROSSTALK)

BARNES: ... allow her to be unprofessional?

LIASSON: No, I am not excusing her behavior. What I'm saying is, he chose her for a reason, and I think he wanted a foil.

HUME: Chose well in your view, Mort?

KONDRACKE: Yeah, I think...

(CROSSTALK)

BARNES: ... but it worked well for him.

HUME: All right. When we come back with our panel, we'll talk about the new poll on Hillary, Rudy and others. Stick around.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HUME: All right, folks, let us stipulate that we are polling here at FOX News about a race that hasn't really gotten started yet, but nonetheless there are some interesting results. Among Republicans, we did -- registered Republicans and who do they favor for president? You can see Rudy Giuliani comes out with the largest plurality, 29 percent. John McCain at 22 percent. Newt Gingrich at eight and everybody else is sort of cats and dogs single digits.

And on the Democrats, on the Democratic side of the ledger, we did a similar -- we asked a similar question and look at Mrs. -- Senator Clinton, Mrs. Clinton. She is wildly ahead of everybody. Her next competitor is Gore, who said yesterday that he's not running again. John Edwards, Kerry, even runs behind his former running mate in this poll.

So the question is, all right, let's assume she's a nominee and one of the other two, the Republican side of the nominee, how did that go? Well, against John McCain, 50 percent for McCain, 39 percent for Hillary Clinton. That's virtually unchanged since last month. Rudy Giuliani, how does that go? Basically the same result, 51-to-39 percent.

So whom can Hillary Clinton beat? Well it appears at this stage, if the election were held today, she could beat the vice president, whose polls -- well, they've been down in our polls to less than that percent, down to 35 percent.

So, what does this tell us about -- first of all, it has been the conventional wisdom that Senator McCain has been the front-runner. Does this mean -- does this suggest perhaps that among Republicans he's not the front runner?

LIASSON: No, no, I actually don't think it suggests that.

HUME: Well what does it suggest?

LIASSON: I think that first of all, there's a couple different things this could suggest, one of them is nothing. But let's put that aside because we want to talk about this.

HUME: I don't allow for that.

LIASSON: No, you didn't, I'm just kidding. We love -- believe me, I love doing this. But, anyway, look...

HUME: Doing this.

LIASSON: ... Rudy Giuliani is one of the biggest names in the Republican Party, hottest tickets on the fund-raising circuit, he's the hero of 9/11. He hasn't been doing any of the kinds of things that John McCain has been doing to lay a serious foundation for a run.

HUME: Is this therefore good news for John McCain, that Rudy Giuliani while doing nothing, is ahead of him?

LIASSON: If you assume, as many people in the Republican Party do, that Rudy Giuliani either A will not run, or B because of his pro-gay rights, pro-choice, pro-gun control stands and three marriages, etc., etc., etc., cannot be nominated in the Republican Party -- when people really start taking this stuff seriously as opposed to saying who they just like and admire, which is some of what is reflected here...

HUME: They're being asked who they want for president.

LIASSON: I know, but I still think this is good news for John McCain. As for Hillary, what's interesting to me about this is that it's so unchanged, it doesn't matter who you put up against her, except for the person who isn't running for president, Dick Cheney, we know that he's not.

It either suggests she has a low ceiling, that's she's not going to be able to get above no matter who's put against her. Or, you know, she's going to be able to maybe, eventually she's going to have to change her image. But it looks like she stays pretty static.

KONDRACKE: I think that the lineups in each party doesn't mean anything because it's all name I.D. at this point. I mean, Bill Frist...

HUME: ... And you're telling me that Rudy Giuliani is better known than John McCain in the Republican Party?

KONDRACKE: By slight amounts. It's overhang from 9/11 and people like the idea of Rudy Giuliani, they don't know who he is and he hasn't been -- for all the reasons that Mara says.

On this Hillary versus McCain and Giuliani, McCain and Giuliani can both get up, almost 20 percent of the Democratic vote, according to this, which should tell the Republican Party something about the kind of person that they ought to nominate if they want to beat Hillary.

And they get 50 percent of the Independent vote, the 32 percent of her vote. That's important, that they should be going after that middle ground, I think.

Now the other message of this is that both Al Gore and Hillary Clinton can beat Dick Cheney, which shows you how far Dick Cheney has fallen.

BARNES: Brit, I want you to know that this is one of the most significant polls that I have seen.

HUME: Will you tell us what you think about it, and stop all this?

BARNES: I think Rudy Giuliani the 9/11 image still helps him a great deal, and contrary to what Mort says, people have a very strong favorable impression of Rudy Giuliani.

HUME: Republicans as well, right?

BARNES: They ought to.

HUME: So do you agree with Mara that nonetheless that for all that, this is really good news for John McCain?

BARNES: Not particularly good news for John McCain. It's great news for Rudy Giuliani. Though I agree with her that Giuliani has more vulnerabilities than McCain does.

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