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May 11, 2007
Special Report Roundtable - May 10
FOX News Special Report With Brit Hume
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I appreciate the members coming down to the White House. We had a good exchange. Uh, it gave me a chance to share with them, um, my feelings about the Iraqi issue.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WILSON: That's the president talking about a meeting earlier this week at the White House with some Republican moderates, a meeting that has gotten a great deal of discussion, here in the nation's capital. Here with some analytical observations, we have Fred Barnes, executive editor of the Weekly Standard; Mara Liasson is here, national political correspondent of National Public Radio; and syndicated columnist, Charles Krauthammer -- FOX NEWS contributors all. Good to have you here. Thanks for joining us.
Let's talk about this meeting. Much has been made about this very frank discussion that was had between Republican moderates and the president. Some have suggested that they spoke to him in terms they had not spoken to the president before, but yet it seems that if you look at it carefully the very same thing that these moderates were said to have said to the president, was also spoken by John Boehner on the weekly Sunday talk shows this past weekend
FRED BARNES, WEEKLY STANDARD: Well, look what they told him, they told him the war in Iraq's unpopular. I think he knew that. They told him that it's actually hurting the Republican Party. Well, we had an election last November in which the war in Iraq, being unpopular, hurt Democratic candidates all over the country. The president Republicans took a thumping in that election and they also said that the guy that has the credibility, on whether progress is being made in Iraq, is General David Petraeus. Well, you know, I think that the president knew that. I knew that. Brian, I'm sure you knew that. Mara knew that, Charles knew that. You know, so they didn't really tell him anything knew.
But here is -- here's the mistake they made, I think. The truth is that this was 11 moderate Republicans, they are going to be tied to President Bush next year on their election whether they like it or not and the more they bring him down and tear him down the worse it makes for themselves. It is counterproductive. They ought to building up President Bush in hopes that he'll be more popular and that -- and will not be an issue against them because they are stuck with him, he's in their party. I don't care what they do, they're stuck with him.
MARA LIASSON, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO: Now look this did underscore what almost everybody is saying, September is a real deadline, not only for the president's ability to hold ton Republicans in Congress, but people for people to make some pretty serious decisions about the war. I mean, I think everything that -- all the reporting that was done about this meeting seems completely credible. You know, everybody is unhappy and especially moderate Republicans who are in these swing districts who are going to be facing some of the toughest re-election prospects in November.
But I do agree with Fred, I mean, the history shows that even if you try to separate yourself from an unpopular president, it doesn't mean the Democrats or whoever your opponent is, is going to give you a pass. But even Secretary Gates is saying, we want to get out, we just want to have some victory so it allows us to get out. I mean, everybody is looking for an exit. It just depends on what shape you want to leave Iraq in.
WILSON: Charles it's a little bit usually to have this kind of dialogue leak out of a private meeting with the president.
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: Well, perhaps it shouldn't happen, but it does happen a lot in Washington. It is hard to expect that there wouldn't be leakage; there are members of Congress, the moderates who perhaps want to have some perfection by leaking it. I'm sure the White House was not very happy about that.
But, it really isn't news and the fact that they were moderates isn't news. Rank and file Republicans, conservative Republicans, are equally scared to death about the war and about how it's going to affect their prospects in November. And I think, as the president said, the clock is ticking here and it strikes midnight in September when Petraeus returns. But until then the Republicans are going to hang with the president in the votes.
WILSON: Which is really what matters.
KRAUTHAMMER: Which is what counts and then once -- if Petraeus returns with either bad news or no news, then he's going to lose a large number of Republicans in the Congress and he will lose control of the Iraq policy.
WILSON: Let me throw this out, the president says they've told the Iraqis they need to get their act together. The vice president was in the region, told our Bret Baier that he was very hard in his discussions about you need to stand up and take responsibility, get things moving. And yet shortly after the vice president leaves, the Iraqi parliament turns into something that's -- can only described as chaos and has to dissolve for a couple of days.
BARNES: Yeah, just sort of like the parliament here. You know, remember all that -- all those bills that passed the house in January. Now, whatever happened to them? Not one of those has been enacted.
LIASSON: It is hard to compare the Iraqi parliament to the American Congress.
BARNES: Hey look, it's hard -- no, no -- look, it's had to get things trough legislators, period.
Look, I think that they ought to go ahead and pass these bills, you know, dividing up the oil money and so on, but that's not the most important thing. The only thing that really matters is winning the war, securing Baghdad, having the surge succeed. That's what matters.
WILSON: All right, got to leave it right there. Next up with the all-stars, a look at British Prime Minister Blair's legacy and what we can expect from his likely successor. Don't go anywhere.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TONY BLAIR, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: I've been prime minister of this country for just over 10 years. In this job in the world of today I think that's long enough for me, but more especially for the country. And sometimes the only way you conquer the pull of power is to set it down.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WILSON: Tony Blair making an announcement that was no big surprise that's going to step down as prime minister of that country and there will be change there. This has been the president's most staunch ally on the war against terror -- Charles.
KRAUTHAMMER: He was, he remains so, and he'll probably be succeeded by someone -- although he is extremely opaque -- George Brown, and nobody quite knows what he thinks, who will probably remain a steady course. But Blair leaves unpopular, but I think he'll be remembered very, very highly in history. Firstly, economically he pulled the British left out of the socialist gutter and had tremendous success, low unemployment, inflation, and growth the strong pound, and everybody in Britain recognizes that.
They are not going to return to the old socialist past. And I think even on foreign affairs, Iraq has made him unpopular, but it's going to wear away. After all, in 500 years the Brits have colonized and conquer and been chased the out of more places than we can name. Iraq -- they'll be out of Iraq in a year or two and if you compare it with the losses in wars, even in colonial wars, the British have lost under 150 in the five years of the Iraq war. Britain will be out within a year or two, Blair will be remembered for his economics and for a very sort of idealistic foreign policy that'll be remembered, I think, very well.
WILSON: Mara, what do you think?
LIASSON: Yeah, and I think, you know, Blair has actually followed in a long tradition of British prime ministers to be strong allies of the United States. That wasn't anything unusual, but it defiantly cost him. I mean, he is leaving with Iraq a huge shadow over his legacy, at least in the short term, and I agree with Charles, historian might rethink things after we see how Iraq turns out and how the British economy continues and certainly on that front, on the domestic front, he leaves some pretty strong.
WILSON: A lot of people believe he is more popular in this country than he is in his own.
BARNES: Well, I think that's true. I mean, you see the poll numbers and -- to the extent you can believe polls, that's true and I happen to believe these numbers, he's very popular -- he's very popular with me, I'll tell you that. You know.
WILSON: You're a big fan, aren't you?
BARNES: I am a big fan of Tony Blair. Look, when we came in, he recognized that the most important thing for an English prime minister is to maintain and nurture the special relationship with the United States and he's done a magnificent job on it. The good news about Gordon Brown, who will replace him as prime minister, who's now the treasury secretary or as they say, the chancellor of the ex-checker, he's pro-American too, and everybody I've talked to, Brits who are both conservatives and liberals say Gordon Brown is much more pro-American and will be, well, protective of the special relationship than the Labor -- rather, the Conservative Party leader now, David Cameron, who's pretty much of a wet and has spoken about -- really about putting some distance between the United States and Great Britain, which would be a mistake, I think.
LIASSON: Look, a special relationship is great as long as it's working. I mean, President Bush has had the exact same problem as Tony Blair. I mean, he went into a war that didn't turn out the way he wanted to and so far it's unclear to see how the ending can be successful. And the same exact problem is happening to Bush.
KRAUTHAMMER: But, in the British perspective, it's a lot smaller and more peripheral and enterprise than the war is here, and that's why I think it's memory will fade away rather quickly. Here it won't because of our losses and how much effort that we have spent and also the repercussions.
But I think Blair was a remarkable ally. And not because he was a poodle, as everybody accuses, he believed in this before the Bush administration had come into office. He spoke of bringing down dictators in the Balkans. He went after Milosevic and he mentioned Hussein in the late '90s, so it wasn't as if he followed us, essentially we followed him.
BARNES: Look, if somebody was a poodle, Bush -- rather Bill Clinton was his poodle in the Balkans because it was Blair who really got Clinton to intervene against Milosevic.
WILSON: Rare to see a politician who takes a stand and then never waivers from it.
BARNES: Yeah.
KRAUTHAMMER: Yeah.
LIASSON: You know, the other thing is he failed also in getting President Bush to conduct the war the way that he would have. That's another kind of tragedy for him.
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