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April 11, 2007

Special Report Roundtable - April 11

FOX News Special Report With Brit Hume

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN JOHN MCCAIN (R-AZ), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We, who are willing to support this new strategy and give a General Petraeus the time and support that he needs, have chosen a hard road, but it is the right road. It is necessary and just. Democrats, who deny our soldiers the means to prevent an American defeat, have chosen another road. It may appear to be easier course of action, but it is a much more reckless one and it does them no credit, even if it gives them an advantage in the next election.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: Strong medicine today from the John McCain who made what was obviously a carefully prepared -- a carefully written, and I might say, carefully delivered speech at VMI.

Some thought on this speech and what it means from Fred Barnes, executive editor of the Weekly Standard; Mort Kondracke, executive editor of Roll Call; and back by popular demand, the syndicated columnist, Charles Krauthammer -- FOX NEWS contributors all.

Well, what about this speech? This -- politicians make in lot of speeches. McCain's support for victory in this war is not a new idea, but this was something different, would you not agree -- Charles.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: It was, it was extremely strong, it was crafted and it made a case in favor of the war that even the president hasn't with that kind of strength in the elegance. People say that he no choice. He did have a choice. All the senators who are running for the presidency support the war, but all of them at one point or other have backed away. Clinton and Edwards, Kerry -- before them -- Chuck Hagel and others. McCain never has. He's criticized...

HUME: He's dumped over the conduct of the war.

KRAUTHAMMER: The conduct of the war, but he always maintained the war must be won and it can be won, which his opponents have not. and he makes that case today, very strongly, and he said, I think, very sincerely, that it is the unpopular course, but he's risking his political career on that and that's a matter of principle.

But he also did something else. He made a very strong political attack on the Democrats. And he's right, if Democrats really want to end the war -- Senator Reid says it's not worth the blood of another soldier -- they want to end it tomorrow and they can. But instead, they want to slow bleed the war.

John Murtha has chosen the strategy of making all kinds of requirements on readiness, which he chose explicitly as a way to pretend it's in favor of the troops, but instead is a way to make the war and the surge unwinnable.

The Democratic effort is to take possession of Iraq as an issue in '08 and not a possession of the war. That's what McCain attacked and I think it's the first time it's been done well and he's right in doing it.

MORT KONDRACKE, ROLL CALL: Yeah, I think this was a political speech in the sense that he's going to win favor with Republicans, I think, to some extent by harshly attacking the Democrats on this -- I think he was even harsher...

HUME: So you think it's more a political speech than a policy speech?

KONDRACKE: No, no, no, it's both. I think it's definitely both. But it was partly political because of the harshness of the attack.

It think that he has to lot of credibility. When he says that this war can be won, he has credibility gained from having been such a harsh critic of the way the war was fought in the first place all the way along, ever since the beginning saying that there weren't enough troops there, that, you know, we weren't regarding facilities et cetera, et cetera. And constantly calling for that and criticizing Rumsfeld, and now he says that Petraeus has a plan to win and that there are glimmers of hope that we can win. People ought to listen to him. And you know, instead of just dismissing everything he says as pure politics, because it's not pure politics, it's only partially politics.

FRED BARNES, WEEKLY STANDARD: You know, there's a saying, Brit, that I heard the other day from the Haley Barbour, the governor of Mississippi, we all know he was a lobbyist up here, before that. And he said: in politics, the best thing to do is to be for what you're for. In other words, to talk out and campaign and promote the things you really believe in, what you're really for.

This is what John McCain is really four. And Mort's right, he's been -- and Charles, too -- he's been for the victory in Iraq the whole time and the press now has been incredibly unfair to him. They attack him, they say well he's just backing Bush now. Well, as McCain pointed out in his speech, Bush has adopted a new strategy, counterinsurgency, and has sent in more troops.

(CROSSTALK)

HUME: Well, Bush has moved closer to McCain then McCain has toward Bush on this question.

KRAUTHAMMER: That's true.

BARNES: Exactly, Bush has adopted the McCain strategy and McCain is backing it, he thinks the right thing -- it's the right thing and he's seen glimmers of hope. I thought this was a very good speech. It wasn't over the top, it was harsh. And I think the two best speeches that I have heard over the last, what four or five year about Iraq, explaining why we're there and why we have to stay there and why we have to win were both actually given McCain. The first one was at that Monday night at the Republican convention in New York in 2004 and then this one today.

HUME: All right, let's talk for a minute about what his prospects now are for recovery. There's a new spate of polls out from Gallop which show both Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani with expanding leads in their respective fields. The Real Clear Politics' average has McCain still well back.

BARNES: It takes a while, Brit, for the polls...

HUME: I understand that, I'm just saying, do you think it will -- will do this -- will this really reach out to Republican voters?

BARNES: I think it will help them. I think it will help him. Will it get him the nomination or not? I don't know, you know, he as this saying out: I'd rather lose a campaign then lose the war. It reminds you a little of Henry Clay's famous statement, you know, I'd rather be right then president. Well, Clay was right, but he was never president.

(LAUGHTER)

KONDRACKE: I think we can recover. Look, the more we find out about Rudy Giuliani and his connections with Bernard Kerik that should take some of the luster off of him. I'm not that Fred Thompson is ever going to catch fire and Mitt Romney, you know, can't find his missing hunting licenses, so the more they sink...

HUME: That takes care them, boy. Mort's the grim reaper here, has just dusted off three of McCain's opponents.

KONDRACKE: Well, McCain can rise again.

KRAUTHAMMER: Look, McCain had lashed himself to the mast on this issue at the beginning. He had all kinds of chances to back away. He hasn't, honorably. And because he's tied to it and he suffers because as a result, because it's an unpopular war, he can only gain if he makes the case, show people that he's right and argues about the war. Because if he lets its smolder, he can only lose politically on that basis.

HUME: Next up with the panel, all charges are dropped against those former Duke University lacrosse players. Now what? Stay with us, that's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROY COOPER, NC ATTORNEY GENERAL: Based upon the significant inconsistencies between the evidence and the various accounts given by the accusing witness, we believe that these three individuals are innocent of these charges.

The inconsistencies were so significant and so contrary to the evidence that we have no credible evidence that an attack occurred in that house on that night.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: Wow. It doesn't get much stronger when lawyers are talking about their colleagues. This as the state attorney general talking about the district attorney, Mike Nifong, and the prosecution he brought against those three Duke University lacrosse players. Is there anything enduring about this case that takes this anywhere? Is there an object lesson? What do we take away from this? Those lacrosse players have been utterly vindicated.

KONDRACKE: Yeah, right, utterly vindicated.

HUME: And we probably ought to reflect a little bit on whether they will -- whether the stain that everyone feared they'd bear on their lives, will be gone now.

KONDRACKE: Well, I think that this is such a high visibility case that when they fill out a job application the line says "have you ever been accused of a felony" they can identify themselves as the innocent Duke lacrosse players and everybody's going to forget about it. So, I think the ruin that this case could have wreaked on their lives, and has, I mean, clearly they've been through hell and...

HUME: Thirteen months.

KONDRACKE: You know, is never to be -- they'll never forget it. It's a trauma they'll live with all their lives. But Reade Seligmann, one of the accused, said today, what I think is the lesson, which I don't think most of the public has taken to heart, and it was only briefly, that "if the police and the prosecutor can railroad us, I wonder what happens to people without our resources." And that should be the lesson to all of us, you know, rich white people that this goes on, not to this extent, not this egregiously, but plea bargains are demanded from innocent people all of the time. Cops are mistreating people all over the country, all of the time, and that the...

HUME: How do you know that?

KONDRACKE: Oh come on, there's people let out of jail with DNA discovery all the time, that were rushed into jail, had bad defenses. You know that happens all of the time. And this is a case of prosecutorial...

(CROSSTALK)

BARNES: This wasn't the lesson I got from it, I'll tell you that, I mean, the rush to judgment here, but it was a rush to judgment by the press, by all of all these faculty members at Duke. And I saw this mealy- mouthed statement from the Duke president, Richard Brodhead in which he said he'd always been careful to note that these guys were innocent and so on. Well, what did he do? One, he threw two of them out of school. He told the Duke lacrosse coach, said: You get out of town, off this campus, today, and don't come back. Fired him...

HUME: I think Brodhead, I think he has a lot to answer for, here.

BARNES: He does. He has to apologize. You know, one of the things - - you didn't show what Roy Cooper, the North Carolina attorney general, said. He said: a lot of people owe an apology to a lot of people. Brodhead's one, the media's one -- they wrote all those stories based the assumption that this was privileged white guys who had prayed on poor black women, reminded them of the slave days and so on.

And then there was all that stuff with the Duke faculty members, you know, one of them said: Players who were are in these helmet sports, they're prone to take violence against women. And one of them likened the Duke case, assuming, based, at least tacitly on the assumption that they were guilt -- likened it to the Emit Till lynching in Mississippi in 1955. Amazing stuff, they need to apologize.

KRAUTHAMMER: Look, Roy Cooper undid a lot of damage. And the use of word "innocent" was absolutely important. Everybody expected he would say there wasn't enough evidence, he would punt, he's say, well, we're going to have to let it go. He did, he said, these boys were exonerated, they're innocent, it never happened. And the excoriation he give against the prosecutor was something that was really quite unheard of, as you indicated.

I mean, he called him everything but a runaway prosecutor. He accused him of an egregious conduct, misconduct, mishandling of evidence. I mean, in the middle of that press conference you expected he'd pull out a noose and say there's going to be a hangin' at 6:00, and you wouldn't have been surprised. But by acting the way he did, he undid a lot of that damage. Otherwise, these boys would always have walked around with a cloud. They're going to have a reputation, but the word "innocent" is important.

HUME: Now, tell what can we now expect from the faculty and from the administration of Duke University?

KRAUTHAMMER: Nothing. They showed themselves early on as cowards and they remain a cowards.

BARNES: They were worse than cowards. They -- so many of them pretended that these Duke students were guilty.

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