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January 22, 2007

Special Report Roundtable - January 22

FOX News Special Report With Brit Hume

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN HILLARY CLINTON (D), NEW YORK: Looking forward to it. It'll be a great contest with a lot of talented people. And I'm very confident I'm in, I'm in to win, and that's what I intend to do.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: Well, there she was in all her glory, over the weekend, saying that and also saying in a video, widely distributed on the Internet, that she was a candidate. She looked very comfortable and calm and pleasant and even like a hostess in the video.

Some thoughts on this candidacy of Hillary Clinton for president from Bill Sammon, senior White House correspondent of the Washington Examiner; Mort Kondracke, executive editor of Roll Call; and Mara Liasson, national political correspondent of National Public Radio -- all are FOX NEWS contributors.

So, Bill, what do you think about this campaign? I noticed Bill Richardson, when he that when he jumped in today, he did a video. Barack Obama did a video. Is that now the new -- I mean, is this the way we're all going to go now? Start with a video and then you get hit from that and that then gets distributed and everybody can look at it and then you make an announcement later?

BILL SAMMON, WASHINGTON EXAMINER: Nobody can ask questions when you released a canned video, so there's that advantage. It's starting to look a little unoriginal, thought, because Barack Obama got a big splash out of it. Hillary clearly recorded hers in reaction to his.

HUME: Do you think?

SAMMON: Well, they said that she recorded at the next day. And clearly he was dominating the news cycle and she choked off the oxygen to him by jumping into the race. We'd still be talking about Obama if she hadn't done this a couple of days after he did.

I think the video looked a little bit -- I mean, she looked fine, but it was a touch of -- it looked a little contrived that she was trying to be more conversational, "let's chat," and I'm not sure she did anything to erase the baggage that is still there for not just Republicans but Democrats, as well.

MARA LIASSON, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO: Oh, I thought it was very affective. Now, she's had plenty of baggage, I agree. She's -- you know, a lot of people who say they won't vote for her under any circumstances, but that video showed what you can do with a web announcement. Barack Obama had a perfectly effective one, but it was in a dark -- it looked like the dark corner of his office.

HUME: Yeah, it certainly looked dark on TV...

LIASSON: Yeah, but the point is that Hillary Clinton had a lot of production values and she communicated a warm and engaging persona which is not the image of a lot of the public have of her. So, in that sense, it was a chance for her to show herself in a different light, very relaxed, very womanly, less...

HUME: And Mort, very accessible.

MORT KONDRACKE, ROLL CALL: Yes...

LIASSON: And very accessible, and she's having a live video Web chat, of sorts, tonight -- for three nights, tonight, tomorrow and the next night. And she's going to...

KONDRACKE: (INAUDIBLE)

LIASSON: Of course. Of course. But, she's also going to Ohio on the weekend -- Iowa on the weekend and she'll shake hands and she's doing the same thing in New Hampshire, so she'll be doing some (INAUDIBLE), too.

KONDRACKE: Look, she's got to juggle likability, strength, electability, and ideology in this contest. Now, I thought that this video was an attempt to raise her likability quotient, about which there's been some question. I mean, she's going to start a conversation with "you" and all other Americans about things and that means that she cares what you think and she wants to, you know, develop a dialogue and so on.

So, the problem is to win at general election she's got to convey strength. In this world in which we live, the chances are that unless something miraculous happens, that George Bush is going to leave us with a world in which everything's a mess and we've got to restore our likability in the world without losing our leadership capacity and I want to hear from her and all the other candidates how she proposes to do that...

HUME: OK, well, we hear all that, before we get to the general election, Mort, let's see if we can make some judgments about the primaries. She has clearly, for all the baggage, she clearly had an enormous advantage, $14 million in the bank, everybody in America knows who she is, she's overwhelmingly favored, although not universally, but overwhelmingly favored in the Democratic Party. Can anybody, that you can see out there, stop her?

KONDRACKE: Sure.

HUME: Who?

KONDRACKE: Well...

HUME: Who now looks like -- is Barack Obama really on the way to doing it, in your judgment?

KONDRACKE: Well look, he's going to get, as Fred, I think, said the other day, you know, once you get beyond Iowa and New Hampshire, you have a lot of primaries in which a majority of the Democratic vote may be African- American. Now, he's going get a lot of that vote. And Bill Clinton was going to help her get that vote, but now it's going to be challenged. I mean, on the other hand, she's a big base of women...

SAMMON: I think both Barack and John Edwards are credible threats to Hillary Rodham Clinton, at this stage of the game. She's still the front- runner, but you know, I do not know anybody who hates Barack Obama. I don't know anybody...

(CROSSTALK)

HUME: He is enormously popular. I mean, as a personality, he is certainly enormously appealing.

SAMMON: But, I mean, my point is, that I don't know anybody who hates, you know, Barack or John Edwards or Bill Richardson, but there are people in America who, I don't think it's an exaggeration to say, either hate or, you know -- or strongly disliked Hillary Clinton.

HUME: You know, that's a good question. We talk -- this has been talked about before. Some people associate her baggage with her husband. Did does she have more than he had and is it different?

LIASSON: Well, it's different, of course and some of it's his, but most of it's her very own. And look, in the Democratic primary, I don't think that there are a tremendous number of Hilary haters. What there are, are people who worry about the Hillary haters and if there are too many of them to stop her from winning the White House, then that's going to be something she's going to have to overcome. I think what she's going to try to prove is she is tough and strong, she's withstood all these Republican attacks, therefore, she can withstand them again and beat back all the doubters.

HUME: Next up with the panel: The competing Senate resolutions on the war in Iraq and the proposed surge of troops, stay tuned.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN WARNER (R-VA), SENATE ARMED SERVICES CMTE: We urge, Mr. President, respecting your right as commander in chief, we urge you to look at other options by which you do not have the magnitude of 21,500 inserted into Iraq.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: Well, that is the -- and important player, Senator Warner, he was the former chairman of the Armed Services Committee, now ranking member there. He's been a supporter of the president on Iraq and he is now, with his own resolution, joined by some others, become one of those opposing what the president is trying to do there.

Now, it's only a tiny fraction of the -- not even a quarter of the Republicans in the Senate who are doing this, but it's out there and it doesn't look as if one or another of those measures will pass unless filibustered. So, what's going to happen here? You got 11 resolutions, the Warner resolution is still disapproved, it's not as strong. What's going to happen here?

KONDRACKE: Well, you know, they're not at 60 votes yet, so far as I can count, they're up to 57 votes, so if there were a filibuster, it probably would become successful.

HUME: It would never come to a vote.

KONDRACKE: Well, it would never come to a vote, right. I don't know whether there is going to be a filibuster or not. There's been various reports. But, what this means is, I would think that any Democrat who would be inclined to vote for the other resolution, which is the Biden/Levin resolution, would vote for this one, too. So, you would get an accumulative total of votes against the president. It would make a majority, everybody knows it would make a majority...

HUME: I mean, there is a majority for one or the other if not both of these measures.

KONDRACKE: Right, so the president, in effect, has already been repudiated...

(CROSSTALK)

HUME: Now, now...

LIASSON: Politically, this is a parking place for people who don't want to go...

HUME: Hold on a second, I have a political question. Is it better for the Republicans to allow the vote to happen, with whatever embarrassment it may cause the president, and put these Democrats and others on record, including some of their own on record, resisting the president on this, or is it better not to have it?

LIASSON: You are talking Levin/Biden?

HUME: I'm talking about both.

LIASSON: Oh, I think that they're going -- I think for them to filibuster the Warner/Collins -- I mean, Warner/Collins...

HUME: No, you're missing my point. The question is -- is it wiser to...

LIASSON: Yes.

HUME: Is it wiser not -- is it wiser to not filibuster and allow a vote, not block it...

LIASSON: Yeah.

HUME: And let these Democrats get on record.

LIASSON: You think there's not 60 votes so that you can't filibuster, if you think it's going -- their -- it would pass by that margin, sure. It's wiser.

(CROSSTALK)

KONDRACKE: Bill, go ahead.

SAMMON: The ultimate scenario...

HUME: Wait a minute, why is it wiser to allow -- I mean, I have a theory about this, I want to know yours -- why is it wiser to let it come to a vote?

LIASSON: I think it's wiser because then it's clear where everyone stands...

HUME: Right, and?

LIASSON: And if this thing works...

HUME: There you go.

LIASSON: You know, you can say, oh, where undercutting the...

SAMMON: From Bush's perspective, the ultimate scenario would be not to have one of these resolutions come to a vote, but to have the Democrats actually put something with teeth in it to a vote, which is to say we are when to put money where our mouth is and cut off funding.

LIASSON: There's nothing like that on the table.

SAMMON: That way you could getting the Democrats on record in a way that Bush could use against them.

HUME: At the end of the day, isn't the political outcome of this dependant on the substantive outcome -- in other words, the good politics is going to align with being on whatever side wins or loses.

LIASSON: Yeah, absolutely.

HUME: If this plan works, and now you see Maliki taking out after the Sadr people and letting -- the Sadr militia is supposed to be standing down -- some of these things may be happening. If this works, wouldn't it have been better for the Republicans to put all these people on record?

SAMMON: Well it would, and the part about...

HUME: If it doesn't work, can anything save them?

SAMMON: Well, first of all, the part about Maliki starting to rein in Sadr -- you're already starting to see that, but part about the troops. The troops aren't even really there yet. And so to have Warner and these folks, maybe not Warner, but some of these people in Congress saying this is already not working and we've had these additional deaths over the weekend, isn't really fair because we don't have the troops there yet.

KONDRACKE: Right. You're exactly right about -- everything depends on whether it works or not. Politically what the Republicans would be smart to do is to have a counter-resolution which splits the Democrats, I mean, on cutting off funding, on withdrawing troops by a certain deadlines. You know, force then to show that they're divided too, and that they don't really have a plan.

HUME: So, what's going to happen?

KONDRACKE: I think that. I think that...

HUME: You think these resolutions will pass and (INAUDIBLE) will be forced to vote on cutting off funds, as well?

KONDRACKE: Yes, I think that they will have a resolution saying that there should not be a cutoff of funds and force the Democrats how...

HUME: Do you agree with that?

LIASSON: Well, if they do that, I think that will not pass.

SAMMON: Probably will, but Bush will still get his way.

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