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June 13, 2006

Special Report Roundtable - June 13

FOX News Special Report With Brit Hume

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BUSH: It's important work. It's vital work and it's historic work. Our military will stay on the offense. We will continue to hunt down people like Mr. Zarqawi and bring them to justice.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: President Bush with emotion showing on his face as he reacted to the applause he got from U.S. forces in Iraq to whom he spoke today on that surprise visit there. This comes on a day when his chief political advisor is now known to be in the clear of any trouble from the Valerie Plame leak investigation, and there's some poll numbers that may gladden his heart a bit as well. The latest Gallup numbers on his approval rating suggest that he's doing a little better, anyway. As you can see back in may he was done to 33 percent up now to 38 percent, that's outside the margin of error and disapproving rating down slightly, as well.

Also on this question how the U.S. is doing in Iraq. U.S. will win, 39 percent thought so back in April, 48 percent think so now. That's obliviously helpful. So, the question is, is the president undergoing something of a recovery? Some observations now from Fred Barnes, executive editor of the "Weekly Standard"; Mort Kondracke, executive editor of "Roll Call"; and Mara Liasson, national political correspondent of National Public Radio, FOX News contributors, all.

What do you think, Mara?

MARA LIASSON, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO: Well, this has been a good week and certainly the trend on the numbers are in the right direction. They were all going in the wrong direction for quite a while. And if this keeps up, this might be the time we said he made a turnaround. I know the White House would like his numbers to be back in the mid 40's before never, because they think that's a more sustainable level for him to be for republicans who are running for re-election. But I think the president is doing what the president can, he's using every tool at his disposal to show that he's paying attention to Iraq, he's trying to capitalize on the good news that has happened, some of it was just fortuitous. I mean the fact that they did manage to get Zarqawi this week. And you know, I think this is a good thing for the president. A lot depends on what he does with it and whether this kind of news continues.

MORT KONDRACKE, "ROLL CALL": Yeah, I think everything depends on how Iraq looks three, four, five months from now as we near elections.

HUME: That was two, three, four or five months ago, though, Mort, I mean, has anything important happened here?

KONDRACKE: Well sure, important things have happened. They formed a government. Zarqawi's dead. I thought the president's trip there was a bold kind of underscoring of the progress that's been there, also a diplomatic move. He did he want to look into Maliki's face and see what, you know, and take the measure of the guy and understand how he operates and stuff. All of that's to the good. The question is, you know, what happens? And Maliki is saying that there will be an offensive to clear out Baghdad. I'm not sure that there's enough troops involved, 75,000 Iraqis and Americans is what Maliki's talking about. But you know, you could -- there are other just signals around that there may be following that some withdrawals.

In the Senate today, John McCain and the republicans all agreed that henceforward, and this is apparently what the administration wants, henceforward, Iraq expenses will be part of the regular budget instead of being a part of the supplemental which suggests they will be manageable and perhaps lower than they've been or at least predictable. So, you may have an offensive first and withdrawal second strategy, which, you know, if Iraq, if the casualty rates come down, then Bush will be -- Bush's polls will continuous to rise.

FRED BARNES, "WEEKLY STANDARD": You know, there is an idea that behind that, Mort, and the idea is that rather than the troops hanging back as General Abizaid has them where they have a small footprint, it's for a time to give them a larger footprint, in other words, to be involved in this offensive, and that that will shorten the time of really putting the clamps on the insurgency allow troops leave earlier than otherwise. More troops will leave earlier. We'll see whether that happen ors not.

When you have Zarqawi, when you have the new government, when you have Karl Rove being cleared, when you have California 50, the House race, which obviously prompted Nancy Pelosi to realize that the culture of corruption issue was getting nowhere. When you have a big Wall Street guy coming on to be treasury secretary, when you have a 5.3 percent growth in the economy, when you package all this stuff together, Bush has had a pretty good month or two, and finally, his numbers show it. You had the Gallup poll, the earlier poll before the one with the one with -- at 33 percent, actually had him at 31 percent. So it's seven points and it's not luck, it's not where they want to be, but it's a lot better of than where he was.

LIASSON: And you know, there's something else we see about Iraq, there is a core group of people, mostly democrats who are always against the war and they're not going to change, but then there's this whole other group of people who does tend to swing with the news there. Remember when you saw a lot of purple fingers on the news? There were Iraqis going to vote and the series of speeches the president gave last September, he was on the offensive? That caused the numbers on Iraq to go up. When there's a spate of bad news they go down, and I think that's what you're seeing here.

HUME: When we come back with our panel, we'll discuss the democrats and the issue of Iraq, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. HILLARY CLINTON (D), NEW YORK: I do not think it is a smart strategy either for the president to continue with his open-ended commitment, which I think does not put enough pressure on the new Iraqi government, nor do I think it is smart strategy to set a date certain. I do not agree that that is in the best interest of our troops or our country.

SEN. JOHN KERRY (D), MASSACHUSETTS: We were misled. We were given evidence that was not true. It was wrong, and I was wrong to vote for that Iraqi war resolution.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: Well, you get a taste there of what it was like that. That was the "Take Back America" conference, which is a gathering of liberal activists, here in Washington and they've been able to command performances by a number of ranking democrats, including the two you just saw. Mrs. Clinton going over badly when she said it's not time to pick date certain to get out. John Kerry doing much better when he repudiated everything he had previously said and -- about his vote on Iraq and about everything he said during his campaign about his position on Iraq. Back with our panel now.

So what about the democrats on Iraq now? You're hearing there Kerry's got a resolution that says out by the end of the year. Other democratic leaders have an alternative, out by the end of next year. What about it -- Mara.

LIASSON: Look, I think this now -- this has been bubbling along in the Democratic Party for a while. Now this issue is before them, this is of the dividing line. Are you for a date certain or are you not? I think this is what this has come to, Mrs. Clinton is on one side right now and John Kerry is on the other. For a while Mrs. Clinton has tried to find a pretty nuanced position where she has not repudiated her vote on the war, but she's very critical of the administration's prosecution of it. Today, as you heard, she went to this conference full of liberal activists. She was booed at that point, she gave otherwise a red meat speech to them where she touched on...

HUME: And they cheered that.

LIASSON: And they cheered that, yeah. But on the war, which is the No. 1 issue for the liberal base of the party, and it's the core, I think, of a lot of liberals' anger and disappointment in her, now there are other things too, they think she's too centrist and too inauthentic. But, that's where it is now, I think the democrats now have this big debate for them. We'll see how many of them vote for the Kerry resolution?

KONDRACKE: Prior to Hillary Clinton's speech, Mara and I were both there, Roger Hicky, who's the co-chairman of this whole event, had to caution the delegates to this thing to be polite to the guests who are about to come speak to us, meaning don't boo Hillary Clinton. I mean in affect, he didn't say exactly that, but she got booed on that statement.

But she did not say what she is for. She's not for staying the course and she's not for setting a date certain, but she doesn't have a strategy of her own and that's sort of where the whole party is at the moment. I mean, individual members, as Mara says, have their own position, but the democrats in the House, for example, there's this debate on Thursday and republicans, I think, foolishly won't let them have an alternative resolution about Iraq. But if the republicans would say, OK, you get a resolution to put on the floor as an alternative to our resolution, then the democrats would have to debate amongst themselves about what to say.

HUME: But the debate, now, as Mara suggested, is clearly not about whether to get out, merely about when. Now, Fred, do the democrats -- do they run a risk here, possibly, of appearing to be a party that thinks you can have victory by retreat?

BARNES: Yeah, no, they do appear to be exactly that, you know, that somehow Zarqawi's dead, let's get out. When everybody, even critics of the war who have gone over there, recognize that the Iraqi army, while better, is not ready to take over everything there, and particularly to full scale without American help take on the insurgents.

It reminds me, Brit, you'll remember this, so will you all, in 1984, remember that presidential democrats? They were fighting over the nuclear freeze. Who enforced set the nuclear freeze first? So, now they're arguing, well who repudiated their war vote first and who set the date certain earlier than the others. I mean, this is a frivolous debate. I mean, this -- when you get down to it, I meant, this is an organization that their idea is to take back America. Everything you hear that's going on there isn't going to take back America, which you can do by elections, it's leading democrats to lose the election in 2008.

HUME: Do you agree with that?

BARNES: And probably in 2006.

HUME: Is this is a perilous place for democrats.

LIASSON: I think that up to now the democratic leadership decided that the best political position was to let Bush be responsible for the mess in Iraq, criticize it, but don't get yourself into this "cut-and-run" corner because back last fall when John Murtha came out, we remember what happened, the president went on the attack, and Cheney went on the attack and said that the democrats were for the party of defeat and retreat or whatever he called it then. And for a lot of people in tightly -- hotly- contested House races this fall, that is not a great position to be in. You know, Nancy Pelosi's district isn't the one in play here, these are swing districts. And, you know, that's where the democrats wanted to be. Now maybe they're heading to a different place.

BARNES: That Gallup poll that you cited before show that a plurality of people want out by -- within a 12 month period, either immediately or not, 49 percent.

HUME: Who do they want to announce it?

BARNES: Well, they didn't ask that.

HUME: Oh, so that's the key point, isn't'? I mean, I think everybody wants out in a 12-month period.

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