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June 10, 2007

Snow, Durbin on Immigration

Fox News Sunday

CHRIS WALLACE, HOST: I'm Chris Wallace. A historic foreign visit for President Bush, next on "Fox News Sunday."

The controversial immigration deal falls apart in the Senate. Can President Bush save his top domestic initiative? We'll ask Tony Snow, the chief White House spokesman.

What's the Democrats' plan for immigration and other key problems facing the country? We'll sit down with the Senate's number two Democrat, Dick Durbin.

Then former top vice presidential aide Scooter Libby is sentenced to prison in the CIA case. Will he get a presidential pardon? We'll ask our Sunday regulars, Brit Hume, Mara Liasson, Bill Kristol and Juan Williams.

And our Power Player of the Week creates a tribute to the troops you'll never forget, all right now on "Fox News Sunday."

And good morning again from Fox News in Washington. Here's a quick check of the latest news, and there's not much. President Bush today became the first American leader to visit the small, predominantly Muslim nation of Albania.

Mr. Bush and officials there talked about membership in NATO and independence for Kosovo.

In Afghanistan, Taliban militants fired rockets near an area where President Karzai was speaking. The rockets went off target and no one was hurt.

And the shuttle Atlantis astronauts are scheduled to rendezvous today with the international space station. Meanwhile, NASA engineers say they're confident a section of the heat-resistant blanket that peeled back during liftoff can be repaired if necessary.

Well, joining us now to discuss immigration and other key issues is the White House press secretary and our old friend Tony Snow.

And, Tony, welcome back to "Fox News Sunday."

TONY SNOW, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Good to be back. Thanks, Chris.

WALLACE: Before we get to the news, let's talk about what everyone said they were really interested in when we told them you were coming on. How are you doing?

SNOW: I'm doing fine. About a little more than a quarter of the way through chemo treatment for cancer again. Good news is CAT scans seem to indicate it's working. I'm feeling great and very excited. WALLACE: One of the things that amazed all of us was how quickly you came back to work, and you're continuing to work even while you're on a chemo regimen.

One, isn't the chemo awfully tough on you? And two, how is the stress of dealing with all of us?

SNOW: Well, I've been dealing with you guys for 28 years, so I'm used to that stress. As far as the chemo, I take it on Friday afternoons. And for about a day I'm kind of woozy and green, and then after that, I'm fine. So it really doesn't interfere too much with work.

The great thing about medical progress and medical science when it comes to cancer, Chris, is that they're getting agents that are more and more precise, that go after the bad cells and not every cell.

So it tends, at least in certain treatments, to be a lot less aggressive in terms of knocking you down than it used to be. And so I think -- as you know, I worked through chemo last time when I was here at Fox and doing it again and delighted to be doing it.

WALLACE: Well, I just want you to -- I know that you feel very deeply in the power of prayer, and I want you to know there are an awful lot of people here who are praying for a full and quick recovery and best of luck.

SNOW: Thank you, buddy. And I'll second that motion. You know, it's one of these things where a lot of times your faith gets tried in interesting ways and it always comes out stronger.

WALLACE: All right. Let's get down to business. What does the president think is the status of immigration reform now?

SNOW: I think what you see in immigration reform right now is that we had a debate going on on the Senate floor where people were issuing amendments and really having a pretty thoughtful debate about how to try to take a bill that had been negotiated between Democrats and Republicans with assistance from the White House and the administration -- and they've been trying to revise it and improve it.

Well, we got about two-thirds through the process, and the -- it failed what's called a cloture vote. And one of the reasons it failed that vote is that you still have a dozen or so amendments that deserve to be heard. And our view is if those can be heard, you're going to get a bill.

The interesting thing, Chris, is sort of the core elements of the plan all have been approved by votes of 60 or more before the entire U.S. Senate.

So I think what you do have is a situation now where people of good will -- conservative, liberal, Democrat, Republican -- want to go through, roll up their sleeves and finish up the business of taking a good, thorough look at the measure. So our sense is if majority leader Harry Reid brings it back up, which he should, and permits a full debate, which would follow what happened last year under similar circumstances, we're not only going to get a bill, but we're going to get a better bill, and it's going to be one that answers the express objections of a lot of people and, I think, provides a way of answering skeptics on issues like security.

What are you going to do about security? Prove it to us. What are you going to do to make sure that rather than having amnesty that you replace it with something that really lifts the requirements for citizenship? How are you going to make us safer, better and more prosperous?

WALLACE: I want to talk about the Democratic side of it in a minute. But the president is going to Capitol Hill Tuesday to talk to Senate Republicans. What's he going to say to them to try to get more of them to support the bill?

SNOW: I think one of the things you do in this is you listen. And I think one of the concerns a lot of people have, at least around the country, is they say, "Look, how can we trust you guys to enforce this? You had a border that's been open for 21 years. How can we trust you?" And I think that's one of the critical questions on security.

If you take a look at the bill, it is the largest investment ever in border security, not only in terms of border patrol agents and technical means, but also really providing the wherewithal to make sure that we have continuous vigilance at the border and continue to improve.

For instance, one of the things in the bill now is mandatory funding, taking all the fines and revenues generated with regard to border security and making sure that money is available at all times, for further use of border security and border efforts.

The other thing is that the original law passed in 1986 was a joke when it came to employers. Basically what that bill said is, "OK, if you broke the law, you got amnesty. And by the way, if you continue to cross the border, don't worry about it. It's not a crime. It's a civil infraction, and there's no punishment for it." That's pretty good inducement for people to cross.

As far as employers, it said, "You don't worry either. We'll slap your wrist with a small fee." So what this bill says is harsh punishments for employers. Employers have real reasons to get on board.

And furthermore, we have a mechanism now for knowing who the illegals are, where they are, whether they're working, whether they're breaking the law. And if they're not working and they're not obeying the law, they get sent out.

WALLACE: Senate Democrats say that it's the Republicans' fault that this bill was pulled this week. Here's what Senate Majority Leader Reid said. Take a look. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. HARRY REID, D-NEV.: The headline is going to be, "Democrats Vote to Continue the Bill. Republicans Vote Against It. The President Fails Again."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: How do you respond to that, first of all? And what do you make of the fact that Senator Read said he had to pull the bill, but on the other hand they took Friday off and they're going to spend all day Monday - - the Senate is -- debating a vote of no confidence in Alberto Gonzales?

SNOW: Well, it's interesting, because my understanding is they could wrap this up in two days. So you take Friday and you take sort of the purely symbolic vote on Alberto Gonzales, and you could have this thing done.

So I think, again, rather than doing finger pointing, if Harry Reid is committed to this -- and this is an historic bill dealing with a problem that a lot of people think has to be solved, and it's got to be solved in a smart way -- why not go ahead and set aside those two days for debate?

I think you're going to find the Republicans and Democrats are willing to do it. And again, as I mentioned, Chris, we're two-thirds of the way through having this process of looking at amendments.

A year ago we had a very similar situation. It failed the cloture early on. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, then Senate majority leader, brought it back up. All the amendments got heard. You got a bill passed.

I think there's a precedent for being able to do this. And I think rather than trying to look for blame, maybe Harry Reid can look for some credit by bringing it back up and getting it voted on.

WALLACE: By the way, and real quickly, on this vote of no confidence on Gonzales, if you get a number of Republicans joining in a vote of no confidence, will that shake the president's determination to keep Gonzales on the job?

SNOW: Not a bit. Purely symbolic vote.

WALLACE: And no effect on the president.

SNOW: No. I mean, what you've got here is -- well, here you have a Senate that's had a great deal of difficulty delivering on any of its promises.

And furthermore, it is perfectly obvious that the president has the right to hire and fire people who serve at his pleasure. Nobody's found anything untoward in terms of what happened.

Therefore, as a consequence, there's an attempt to sort of pull this thing like a piece of taffy and looking if there's any political advantage in it. There's not.

So what we'll end up having is people burning off a day expressing their opinions, and then we'll have an opportunity to move on.

But do people really think that that exercise is more important than dealing with a problem that's been building for 21 years and has become for many people the most compelling and important issue in American domestic politics?

WALLACE: Let's turn to another big issue, Iraq. Here's what President Bush said yesterday about his decision not to renominate General Peter Pace as chairman of the joint chiefs. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: I think the fact that Secretary Gates made the recommendation not to move forward with a renomination speaks to the U.S. Congress and the climate in the U.S. Congress.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: Does that mean the president is now giving Carl Levin, chairman of Senate Armed Services, and the other Democrats a veto over his nominations?

SNOW: No, I don't think so. But on the other hand, what the president does realize is that the American people are getting a little sick, seeing the kind of nasty gridlock.

You know, you just mentioned a vote of no confidence. The American people have issued a vote of no confidence in Congress and in the Senate. I don't know if you saw it, but Harry Reid's approval rating was 19 percent.

What folks want to see is somebody thinking seriously about how to proceed with this war in Iraq, and Pete Pace is a guy who spent 40 years serving his country nobly and well. And it's a shame that he's not going to be able to serve a second term.

WALLACE: So why not have the fight?

SNOW: Because at this point having a fight really is not going to serve the purpose. We're blessed, as Secretary Gates said, to have a deep bench at the Pentagon.

And rather than going ahead and trying to add more acrimony, what you end up doing is you bring Admiral Mullen up. And this is a guy who not only understands what's going on within Iraq and within the larger war on terror, but also understands what's been going on in the Pentagon, which is the fact that you have interoperability of forces.

Interestingly, when asked what his first concern was, the naval veteran did not say the Navy and the Marines. He said the Army.

So you have high quality people who are certainly going to be able to step up. But I also think that General Pace and Admiral Giambastiani -- they deserve a lot of credit.

It's interesting to me that members said, "Well, yes, we do admire them, but we were still going to start looking backward." It's not a very constructive way, because, frankly, we've got to look forward toward victory.

WALLACE: The president has been taking fire recently from Republicans not only running for president but even thinking of running for president. Here's a sample.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. TOM TANCREDO, R-COLO.: I have been so disappointed in the president in so many ways. We've lost credibility -- the way we bungled Katrina.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN, R-ARIZ.: This war was very badly mismanaged for a long time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NEWT GINGRICH, FORMER SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: I don't think that he drives implementation and looks at the reality in which he's trying to implement things.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: What does the president make of all the criticism? And when you combine it with his failure to move more Republican votes on immigration reform, is he now a lame duck?

SNOW: No. And first let me question that last premise when you're talking about moving Republican votes.

As I pointed out on the core issues, you've got 60 votes, and a lot of Republicans -- a lot of people voted against proceeding because they were not given the opportunity by the Senate majority leader to continue the debate.

I mean, theirs was a procedural thing, saying, "Let's finish the debate. Then we'll have the vote."

So I think, actually, on the issue of immigration, what you've seen is presidential leadership on a tough issue, on a bipartisan basis.

What you have here are people running for or thinking of running for president. What always happens when you have a presidential election campaign? Everybody tries to provide some differentiation between themselves and the guy in office right now. WALLACE: But let me just hold that up right there, because we asked Newt Gingrich about this last week, and he said...

SNOW: Yes, he got a little unhappy about it.

WALLACE: Well, he said in 1988, no Republicans were trying to differentiate themselves from Ronald Reagan.

SNOW: Well, no. Look, there was a little differentiation when you talk about kinder and gentler. There was, in fact, a differentiation in terms of the style, because George Herbert Walker Bush is a different kind of guy than Ronald Reagan was.

And in point of fact, you always look for your own ways, sort of identifying the way forward. What's interesting here is if you ask members who are -- people who are running, would you or would you have not taken on the war in Iraq, they'd say yes.

Would you or would you have not decided to go ahead and tackle the tough issue of immigration? My guess is that you would say yes.

What's happening is that George W. Bush is now in a position where we've been faced with some awfully tough issues -- the war on terror, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

We also have to deal with a situation where we have a growing economy despite September 11th, corporate scandals, two wars, oil shocks, Hurricane Katrina. All of those things would have knocked a lesser economy down. And we have prosperity.

So ask them would you differ on the economic policy -- probably not. Would you differ on the judges? Probably not.

It's always easy at a time like this to point out that the president has tackled tough issues which are always going to be unpopular because they're hard.

But on the other hand, it's going to be up to -- what he has determined to do as president is to build institutions and powers and abilities that are going to make the job of the next president a lot easier.

WALLACE: Finally, we've got a couple of minutes left, and let's go back to one of your practices when you were on this side of the desk, which is a lightning round, quick questions and quick answers, Mr. Snow.

SNOW: We'll see if I'm up to it.

WALLACE: All right. If the judge sends Scooter Libby to jail pending appeal, will the president step into this case?

SNOW: Well, that's up to the president. And I'll let him announce it if and when he decides to do so.

WALLACE: Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov has called for a freeze in deploying a missile defense system in Europe pending negotiations with the Russians.

Is the president going ahead with plans to deploy or will he consider a freeze?

SNOW: Well, number one, deployment is something that's not going to take place for a while. What we're talking about is the best way to protect Europe.

What's interesting is in the G-8, everybody thought that we were going to have this Cold War fisticuffs between the presidents, Putin and Bush. And guess what happened? President Putin came and said, "No, I've got different ideas on missile defense." That is a very important step forward.

The two heads of state are going to be meeting in early July in Kennebunkport. No doubt that's going to be part of the conversation.

Frankly, we are encouraged by the fact that the Russians now are talking about figuring out a way to provide a missile shield that will discourage rogue regimes from loading nukes onto missiles and aiming them...

WALLACE: But you don't regard this Azerbaijan idea as simply an effort to complicate and basically block it?

SNOW: No, I think what you -- we've had a couple of ideas that have been -- Azerbaijan, and you also had the idea of perhaps Iraq or other places as staging grounds. It's important to sit down and listen to what everybody has to say.

WALLACE: Tony, we're going to have to leave it there. We want to thank you again for working on a Sunday, and all the best to you.

SNOW: Thank you.

WALLACE: Coming up, what was the Democrats' role in the failure of immigration reform? We'll talk with their number two man in the Senate, Dick Durbin, when we come right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WALLACE: Joining us now to discuss the status of immigration reform and other issues is the Democrats' number two man in the Senate, Assistant Majority Leader Dick Durbin.

And, Senator, welcome back to "Fox News Sunday."

SEN. DICK DURBIN (D), ILLINOIS: Thanks, Chris.

WALLACE: Where does immigration reform stand now? And what will it take for Senator Reid and the Democrats to agree to bring it back to the floor?

DURBIN: We need a breakthrough on the Republican side. We had two weeks of debate. We had a week of Memorial Day recess between, but two weeks of debate.

It reached a point, a real impasse, where we were offering to Republican senators a group of amendments that we would just call, four to eight amendments on the Republican side, and the Republican senators were objecting to calling their own amendments.

So it will take some leadership on the Republican side to agree on the number of amendments, to agree that we're not going to waste more time and procedural slowdowns, and really get to the heart of the issue.

WALLACE: Well, Ted Kennedy -- I mean, you talk about it's the Republicans' fault. Ted Kennedy and other Democrats say that they pleaded with Senator Reid and with you to just give it some more time, just give it a couple of more days.

Here's what Senator Kennedy said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. EDWARD M. KENNEDY, D-MASS.: I personally believe that if we had taken more time, we would have had an opportunity of reaching a conclusion. (END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: Why was it so urgent to pull the bill off the floor on Thursday, when you took Friday off and you're going to spend all day tomorrow, Monday, debating a non-binding resolution, a vote of no confidence in Alberto Gonzales?

DURBIN: Chris, we were prepared to stay Friday, Saturday, through the weekend, whatever it would take -- aside from Senator Craig Thomas' funeral, which we were committed to, of course -- to get this done.

But it had to be with some understanding that it was going to be a constructive debate. There are four or five members on the Republican side who don't want a bill. They want to continue to offer amendment after amendment after amendment, to the point where this was bogging down.

At this point in the debate, the last time we debated the immigration bill, we had had 30 roll call votes on amendments -- 30 amendments, I should say. In this debate, we've had 42. There's been ample opportunity.

But we needed to have the Republican leadership say, "There is an end to this. There are only so many of these amendments which we will entertain." And that's what we were waiting for.

WALLACE: Now, you put it all on the Republicans, and Senator Reid says it's the Republicans' fault. But let's discuss the role the Democrats played.

Senator Reid gave Byron Dorgan three opportunities to enter amendments on this guest worker program, and you ended up voting for a measure to end the guest worker program after five years. It passed by a single vote that the Republicans viewed as a poison pill.

Aren't, in fact -- I'm not saying it exclusively, but aren't your fingerprints and Harry Reid's fingerprints all over the collapse of this bill?

DURBIN: Forty Democratic senators supported Byron Dorgan's sunsetting of this temporary guest worker program both times that it was called for a vote on the floor.

So it's true. Our Democratic caucus believes that we really have to take a hard look. We don't want to sacrifice the future of American workers to provide jobs for those...

WALLACE: But three roll calls on the same issue?

DURBIN: There were two roll calls, two direct roll calls, on the Dorgan amendment. And I will just tell you that I don't think this was a poison pill, as they say.

To say at the end of five years we'll take a look and see if 400,000 new workers a year is right, or 200,000, or more or less -- that's not unreasonable.

And so I think what we tried to do was to bring that issue forward, had an opportunity -- with Republican support, I might add -- to finally have it part of the bill.

Now, take a look at the other side. There were four or five senators who just kept offering similar amendments, one after the other, and each time they were offered, many of the folks who were designing this bill kept saying, "Well, we'll take this one, but it's not a deal killer." From our point of view, some of those were deal killers.

WALLACE: All right. You have been one of the strongest opponents of the president's Iraq war policy. I think you'd certainly agree with that.

But when you voted recently to keep funding the troops even though there was not going to be a timetable for withdrawal, you said this, and let's put it up on the screen. "Our soldiers should never be bargaining chips in this political debate."

Didn't Senators Clinton and Obama, who voted against funding the troops -- didn't they, in fact, use the troops as a bargaining chip?

DURBIN: I don't believe in their minds that they did. Each of us had to make a very difficult conscience decision.

There were 23 of us who voted against giving the president the authority to start this war -- one Republican, Lincoln Chafee, and 22 Democrats. And I have felt from the beginning this war was a terrible mistake.

Without adequate planning, with deception of the American people about the reasons for the war, with no plan to bring our troops home, we've seen this war now in its 4.5 years cost us over 3,500 American lives.

My feeling has always been I want this war to end. I want our troops to come home. I want to do it in a reasonable and orderly way. But I'm going to provide the money for our troops while there so that they will never be shortchanged when it comes to training and equipment, whatever is necessary...

WALLACE: Well, but if I may, Senator...

DURBIN: ... to come home safely.

WALLACE: ... that's precisely the point. Even though you are -- you know, your bona fides are very clear -- you oppose the war, you want a timetable for withdrawal -- you were unwilling to let the money for the troops run out while they're still on the front lines.

How do you justify Obama and Clinton's votes to do exactly that?

DURBIN: I think you'll need to ask each of them. But I know when it comes to Senator Obama, he and I talked about this at length, and his feeling was that we had to send a clear message through this vote to the president this war must end.

Now, each of us can look at it from a different perspective. I'm sure we all have respect for the troops and want to support them. But let's get down to the bottom line here.

The bottom line is this president vetoed a timetable to bring these troops home in an orderly way, did it within hours of receiving it in the White House.

And now we have a situation where this war continues, escalated with more troops, more Americans being killed and no end in sight.

I hope you can understand the frustration of the American people as well as of the senators on both sides of the aisle that this president clearly does not have a plan.

Now look at the latest announcement about General Pace. This troubles me. General Pace is a man who's given his life to America. He deserves all of our gratitude for his commitment to military service.

And we are being told by the White House now that they will not renominate him as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This is a White House that is prepared to fight for Attorney General Gonzales but not fight for Marine Corps General Peter Pace.

WALLACE: But wait, wait, wait. Wait, wait. They say the reason was is because they went to Carl Levin, chairman of Senate Armed Services, and he said you're going to have a terrible problem getting Pace through.

Are you saying that the Democrats would have confirmed Pace?

DURBIN: Let me tell you this. Whoever, whether it's Peter Pace or Admiral Mullen who comes before us and wants to defend this president's policy -- he's going to have some tough grilling on Capitol Hill from both sides of the aisle.

The same thing would happen if that nominee went before most of the American people, two-thirds of whom believe this war was a mistake.

So to suggest that tough sledding on Capitol Hill is a reason to pull the plug on General Pace's career I don't think is a good argument. If that's the argument, why are we standing behind Attorney General Gonzales?

Here's a man who's been through rough sledding, has said some things on Capitol Hill which he's had to recant, who's had staff people say well, things were being done in the Department of Justice that shouldn't be done, and the president's willing to stand by his man.

WALLACE: Would you have voted to reconfirm Peter Pace?

DURBIN: I would say at this point I probably would have. I don't hold him responsible for this situation. There are some things he said, incidentally, extraneous to the war in Iraq which troubled me, but by and large, I respect him very much.

Here's a man who's given 40 years of his life to this country. I don't believe it was his idea to go into this war.

This was the president's strategy. He had an inopportune moment in history when he became chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and had to basically implement a plan or come up with a plan for a president that hasn't worked very well.

WALLACE: The Democrats have been in control of Congress now for more than five months, and the only part of your agenda that you have passed and sent to the president and that he has signed is an increase in the minimum wage.

Don't you need to show that you can govern?

DURBIN: I think you missed one of the major things that we accomplished. When the Republicans left control of Congress, they had not passed their appropriation bills. They didn't get their homework done from the last session of Congress.

So the first thing we had to do was to do the work left over from the Republican leadership. It was a heavy lift. The continuing resolution was passed, sent to the president and signed.

We then sat down after a lot of hearings and a lot of consideration and gave this president, for the first time in 4.5 years, a real timetable to bring the troops home. On a bipartisan basis, we sent the bill to him, which he vetoed.

We have also passed 9/11 recommendations. We have passed stem cell research.

WALLACE: Well, wait, wait, wait, wait. Let's take a look, because we've actually compiled something on this. Let's put it up on the screen.

These are the major pieces of the Democratic agenda -- you're getting out your list...

DURBIN: I've got my list.

WALLACE: ... of the Democratic agenda that the Democratic- controlled Congress hasn't passed.

Implementing recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. Separate versions have been passed, but the Congress has not passed it. It's not gone through a conference report. It is not on the president's desk.

Reducing the cost of student loans. Not on the president's desk. Making the government negotiate lower prescription drug prices. Not on the president's desk. Reducing subsidies for oil companies. Not on the president's desk. Don't you run the risk, Senator, of being seen legitimately as a do-nothing Congress?

DURBIN: Not at all. It's five months. And just let me tell you. The American people understand there has been a more healthy debate about this war in Iraq during the five months of a Democratic Congress than in the previous four years.

For four years America was sleepwalking through this war in Iraq. Now hard questions are being asked. And now we have the kind of oversight that Congress has a responsibility to do under our constitution.

WALLACE: I understand, but you've made your point...

DURBIN: But let me point out...

WALLACE: ... you've made your point on that. Why not legislate?

DURBIN: It happens to be the biggest issue facing America. So I think the fact that we've dedicated so much time to it is what the American people believe is the right thing to do.

On the issues you went through -- the 9/11 recommendations. The White House has told us they're going to veto them, but we're going to go ahead, finish the conference reports and send them to them anyway.

We also know that when it comes to the opposition to lowering student loan rates by the White House, we're still going to do that in the higher education bill. The prescription drug...

WALLACE: But you haven't.

DURBIN: Well, the reason we haven't on some can be demonstrated by the next one. Why weren't we able to allow Medicare to negotiate for lower prescription drug costs for seniors? Well, because the Republicans mounted a filibuster successfully and stopped us in that effort in the Senate.

It is more difficult to get things through the Senate than the House. That's how it's built. But the fact of the matter is we have been more aggressive in dealing with the critical issues that America cares about in five months, and we will continue to be.

We leave here this week to go to the energy bill to make sure we have a national energy policy, then the defense authorization bill where we'll be back on Iraq. These are critical issues everybody understands.

WALLACE: Senator Durbin, we're going to have to leave it there. We want to thank you so much for coming in today. And as you go through your agenda, please come back, sir.

DURBIN: Thanks, Chris.

WALLACE: Up next, our Sunday regulars on the immigration deal that wasn't. Who's to blame and what happens next? Stay tuned.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. TRENT LOTT, R-MISS.: Are we men or mice? Are we going to slither away from this issue and hope for some epiphany to happen? No. Let's legislate. Let's vote.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: That was Republican Trent Lott using colorful language and mixed metaphors to urge his fellow senators to take action on the immigration bill.

And it's time now for our Sunday group, Brit Hume, Washington managing editor of Fox News, and Fox News contributors Mara Liasson of National Public Radio, Bill Kristol of The Weekly Standard, and Juan Williams, also from National Public Radio.

So, Brit, what happened to the immigration reform bill, and what are the chances that it will be revived?

BRIT HUME, FOX NEWS WASHINGTON MANAGING EDITOR: Well, what happened to it was that the most powerful lobbying force of all came into play suddenly. It was a grassroots movement of opposition to this, and although there were powerful interests in both parties in support of it, they got overwhelmed for the moment.

Now, they may yet be able to take this thing back from death's door and cobble something together and get it through the Senate. It would still face uncertainty in the House. So it's in very bad shape now.

But really, what happened was there was tremendous grassroots opposition to this bill.

MARA LIASSON, NPR: Yes, I think that although polls showed that the majority of Americans were actually for this, the people who cared the most about it were the people who didn't want it.

I think that it shows that the center didn't hold in this case. This was a bipartisan compromise and the people who were authors of this grand bargain tried to defend it from the attacks from the left and the right.

The president didn't have enough clout to keep his own party on board, and for some reason, the Democratic leadership didn't want to give it the other -- the next couple of days that the sponsors were begging for.

I think that when Arlen Specter said this week the Democrats were wrong but the Republicans were wronger, or some version of that, he was probably right.

I think that the biggest opposition came from the Republicans, but the Democrats' leadership seemed ambivalent about whether they actually wanted the bill or not.

WALLACE: Yes, I want to ask you, Bill, to -- we always say, you know, let's not point fingers. Let's point some fingers here.

I mean, you have one analysis which is that the Senate -- senators who were on the GOP side basically were going to amend this to death, and they couldn't get an agreement to limit the number of amendments.

You also get an argument that -- this is the anti-Republican side -- that the president really didn't push it hard enough or doesn't have the clout to push it.

The flip side is that Harry Reid really didn't care much about the bill, that this Dorgan amendment on guest worker programs -- you know, poison pills -- and that they refused -- and this is demonstrated, that they refused Ted Kennedy's request to keep it up for a little bit longer.

So where do you assess blame?

BILL KRISTOL, WEEKLY STANDARD: I'm happy to point fingers at everyone, but I would point fingers at the drafters of the bill. The more this bill was debated, the less able people were to defend it substantively.

And I say this as someone who was sort of well disposed in principle to this bill. Every time you read a serious exchange between a criticism of the bill and then the defense of it, the critics almost every time had the better of it.

There was a panel here in Washington at the Hudson Institute -- I wasn't there, but a very good friend of mine who knows a lot about this issue and went well disposed to the bill -- two people on each side; serious, substantive debate for two hours -- who came back and said very hard bill to defend.

So I think Brit is right. There was a genuine -- democracy worked in two senses. There was a popular sort of uprising against it, but...

WALLACE: Popular uprising from the right or from the right and the left?

KRISTOL: From both, though a little more from the right, obviously. It was the Republicans who ended up -- the majority voting against cloture and opposing the bill. But that was not, I don't think -- a nativist uprising, a xenophobic uprising, would not have been enough. There were so many weaknesses in the way the bill was drafted, and they cobbled it together. Then they said take it or leave it.

And the idea that we're going to have a temporary worker program where people come for two years, and they're expected to leave for another year before they can come back for two more years -- they're not going to leave.

So you're just recreating the problem of illegal immigrants through this bill. That's just one of many instances where they didn't have a good substantive defense of the way they had drafted the bill.

JUAN WILLIAMS, NPR: Well, I happen to think that you have to make compromise. I think that's what politics is about.

And there was a need, it seems to me, to acknowledge that the current system is illogical. It's inhumane. It's cruel. It's contrary to our ideals as Americans about giving people opportunity to do their best.

What's really going on here -- we're going back and forth on the minutia of Republicans taking key votes in order to defeat the bill and keep it from going forward.

The reality is we're in a society that's undergoing a wave of immigration, a wave of immigration like we've never seen before. And I think there are lots of people who have psychological discomfort with the guys down at the 7-Eleven speaking Spanish or Spanish as the language in the schools.

And that part of the electorate tends to be older, white and conservative, and they're the talk show crowd, and they're the ones who have been hammering the Jim DeMints down in South Carolina without a contrary push coming from President Bush or coming from the business community.

HUME: I think there was a contrary push from President Bush. The problem is that at this stage of his presidency, given the profound unpopularity of the Iraq war, which is now the centerpiece of his presidency, he just doesn't have much influence anymore.

He might have influence with the individual members in some way at some critical moment, but all of his attempts to go out and influence the public sentiment in favor of this bill I think manifestly failed and, in one particular case, made things much worse.

And that was when he appeared to be taking shots at the people in his own coalition, conservatives in particular, who were against the bill.

WALLACE: Mara, I've heard a lot of people the last few days say this just shows that our government is broken, that when we have to deal with the big problems -- Social Security reform, health care, in this case immigration -- that we can't somehow put together a deal that will stand up.

Do you see something fundamentally wrong with the system?

LIASSON: Well, yes. Look...

WALLACE: And if so, why is it that we could pass civil rights legislation in the '60s, which was certainly as controversial, and we can't pass and deal with the big problems today?

LIASSON: Look, it's not the system. It's the people who are in the system that can't seem to compromise.

Look, if you're an American voter, and you want Congress to get something done, and you voted for the Democrats because you thought that divided government would get more things done, you didn't like gridlock and paralysis, and you saw what happened this week, you'd have to conclude that it doesn't matter who's in charge. They just can't get together on a compromise.

I think it's a -- I think it's been really unfortunate. Now, maybe this bill can be resurrected. You know, the people who are for it seem to want to try again. But you're going to have to have a real commitment from the leadership of both parties in the Senate and the White House to get this done. And I don't see that happening.

HUME: Let's not forget how long it took to get civil rights legislation passed. I mean, that was an issue that was sitting over in the United States Senate for decades before something finally happened.

WALLACE: Immigration has, too.

HUME: Well, it has. But on the other hand, they passed something some 20 years ago. It didn't work, and we're now dealing with the consequences of that.

The issue has come to a head really in the last two or three years. For something to get dealt with in two or three years in this town, in this atmosphere -- if it had happened, it would be warp speed.

KRISTOL: Well, plus, there was substantive argument that no bill was better than a bad bill, that the current immigration situation is not a crisis. It's a problem. The country is in pretty good shape. The illegal immigrant...

WALLACE: Health care reform? Social Security reform? I mean, it seems like there's a pattern here that on the toughest issues we can't get people to come together and legislate.

KRISTOL: There's some partisanship, but welfare reform -- look. Health care reform was defeated in '93 and '94, and that was a good thing for the country, too.

I think to compare it with civil rights is obviously a little ridiculous. There, the moral equities were all on one side. I think this is a very controversial piece of legislation. The fact that it couldn't get jammed through in two weeks in the U.S. Senate proves nothing about the system and, you know...

LIASSON: But wait a second. Bill, the kind of things that you think are badly written in this bill could be easily fixed. The fact that they have to go home for a year -- that's a detail.

The basic premise of the bill that you should do something about the 12 million who are here and do something about the border -- that's something that there's consensus on.

What the defenders of this bill, the grand bargainers, were asking for was more time to be able to make it -- to fix those problems.

KRISTOL: That's just not the case. If they want to strengthen the border, strengthen the border. I'm in favor of a path to earn legalization for the 12 million who are here.

The question is why should you do that before you strengthen the border and before you have lots more workers coming in who are going to be able to stay legally.

WILLIAMS: But this was a whole bill. It was a comprehensive reform package that included putting up more agents, putting up more security, more walls even, which I think is futile, but doing all those things.

And yet you had this kind of lump of opposition that was not willing to play ball. I find that, you know, I think, reflective of a deeper intractable problem in the body politic of Washington at this moment.

WALLACE: All right. We need to take a quick break here.

But coming up, Scooter Libby gets prison time in the CIA leak case. What are the chances he'll now get a presidential pardon? Our panel has some answers when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WALLACE: On this day in 1953, President Eisenhower fired back at critics of his Cold War foreign policy. He said the U.S. was committed to a worldwide fight against the communists and rejected calls for isolationism.

Stay tuned for more panel and a special Power Player of the Week.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FRED THOMPSON, FORMER U.S. SENATOR: It's a gross injustice perpetuated in large part by this CIA and this Justice Department and this special counsel who they appointed, and it ought to be rectified. (END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: That's former senator and likely presidential candidate Fred Thompson saying Scooter Libby should be pardoned now that he's been sentenced to prison in the CIA leak case.

And we're back now with Brit, Mara, Bill and Juan. Well, President Bush may have a big decision to make soon in the Scooter Libby case. Vice presidential adviser -- he was sentenced this week to 30 months in prison.

They're going to have a hearing this week about whether he's allowed to remain free pending his appeals, with every indication that Judge Walton's going to say no.

WALLACE: Brit, if Libby is, in fact, headed to prison this summer, what will the president do?

HUME: I used to think he'd pardon him. I'm not so sure now. The president is showing a certain indisposition for certain kinds of fights.

Now, look. He doesn't have a lot of political capital left. That is to say, he doesn't have the kind of influence where he can go out and sway the public with arguments.

But he does have power left, and one of his powers is his pardon power, which is very nearly absolute. My guess is that if he pardoned Libby, there'd be screaming from some quarters. It would die out after a while.

It would probably rally his base and make him seem like he was, you know, going down or going toward the end of his presidency with all guns blazing.

But you know, Senator Durbin wasn't far off earlier in this program when he raised the question of here's an administration that's not willing to fight for Peter Pace.

And he made it perfectly clear, did Senator Durbin, that the subsequent nominee is going to get touched up just as badly. So I'm in some doubt about it.

LIASSON: Yes, look. I don't know what the president is going to do. I still would guess that he would pardon him because a fight for Peter Pace has political consequences. You get to have the whole Iraq war run through again.

I think, you know, pardoning Scooter Libby...

WALLACE: You don't think it's going to be run through anyway?

LIASSON: It will be run through anyway, but I do think that pardoning Scooter Libby is going to be controversial, but the people who won't like it are the people who already don't like him.

He's at 30 percent approval rating. I don't see how much more he's hurt by pardoning Scooter Libby. And if he does pardon him, you know, as Brit says, the base likes it -- he certainly has problems with the base that need to be corrected -- and he shows that he values loyalty above all. WALLACE: Bill, what are the political calculations for the White House in terms of pardoning Scooter Libby? And what do you think he'll do?

KRISTOL: You know, I think he should do it because it's the right thing to do. The judge overruled the recommendation...

WALLACE: All right. No, we'll get to that later. What do you think he will do?

KRISTOL: I think he will not let Scooter Libby go to jail. He may not pardon him. He may commute the sentence, the prison sentence -- in other words, say no prison sentence, but let Libby pay the $250,000 fine that Judge Walton imposed and therefore not overturn the actual verdict.

That way, he can say, "Look, a jury found that he made false statements. I'm not going to challenge that. But this man does not deserve to go to jail. The official recommendation was for a much shorter sentence. Judge Walton for some reason went for the maximum sentence. That's not right. And therefore, I'm going to remove the prison sentence, commute the prison sentence but maybe let the fine go ahead."

I would prefer a clean pardon. If I had to make a prediction, I'd say maybe he'd commute the prison sentence.

WILLIAMS: Well, Vice President Cheney is surely pushing for it, you know, for a pardon, but my guess is that the problems that the president has within the Republican Party right now suggest that this is too much weight going into '08 to put on the party.

They already have trouble, and this would be added trouble -- not with the base; the base might be energized by it, as Brit said and Mara said -- but swing voters would be antagonized by it.

Remember, the White House interpretation of why the party did so poorly in '06 was -- had a lot to do corruption with Abramoff and the like. And the idea that you're now excusing people who are your pals -- you know, this is like a "Sopranos"-like act. You know, "He's one of my guys, and we're going to take care of my guys."

(LAUGHTER)

WALLACE: Well, I'm glad you brought it up. Tonight's the finale of "The Sopranos".

WILLIAMS: Yes. "We're going to take care of my guy." Here's Scooter Libby, the vice president's guy.

WALLACE: A made man.

WILLIAMS: I don't think Vice President Cheney has the weight right now in the White House to get that job done.

WALLACE: Let's talk about the merits of this. And I didn't mean to cut you off. I just wanted to wait a minute.

Brit, what's the merits of this? Should he be pardoned? I mean, he was not convicted of leaking the name of Valerie Plame.

On the other hand, there was a lot of evidence that he was guilty of the crime he was convicted of, which was lying and obstructing justice. What are the merits for a pardon?

HUME: Under normal circumstances, normal prosecutorial situation, not an independent or a special prosecutor, I doubt this case would have been brought, simply because it was a crime that occurred after the investigation began, and an investigation which, by the way, never did establish the underlying crime that the special prosecutor was appointed to investigate in the first place.

So in my mind, that probably qualifies it for a pardon, and on the merits. And the other thing is, of course, as Bill was suggesting, the judge seemed determined to throw the book at the guy, which always raises a question of whether there was justice in the sentence as well.

LIASSON: You know, look. Lying to a federal official is a crime. Now, I can see how you could -- Bill's idea, which I had never thought of before, is certainly one -- you could say that the -- where you're not questioning the legitimacy of the conviction, but you are questioning the severity of the punishment -- there, I can see that you can make some arguments on the merits that this is a punishment longer than is usually given in this case.

But you know, the fact is he was convicted of an actual crime.

KRISTOL: Well...

WALLACE: Now's your chance.

KRISTOL: ... the case was such a farce, in my view, from the beginning of the CIA referral, to the Justice Department ducking its responsibility in appointing Fitzgerald, to Fitzgerald knowing who had leaked the name to the public, nonetheless going ahead with this prosecution.

I think there's a very strong case on the merits for pardon. It's not my idea. It's Bill Otis' idea, a former federal prosecutor, who was on the sentencing commission, who said, "Look, even if the president doesn't want to simply pardon Libby, the commutation of the prison sentence would be a middle ground." I'm for pardon on the merits.

WILLIAMS: Well, it seems to me you've got -- you know, I don't know why everybody is attacking Reggie Walton. He's a Bush appointee.

WALLACE: Who is the judge in the case.

WILLIAMS: The judge in the case. Fitzpatrick is a -- is it Fitzgerald or Fitzpatrick?

HUME: Fitzgerald.

WILLIAMS: Fitzgerald is a Bush appointee. And what they're saying is here he broke the law. You can't go around lying to grand juries.

I agree with you on the essence of who outed Valerie Plame, which is to me a bad thing, there was no resolution that's clear in terms of whether or not a crime was committed.

But in terms of lying to the grand jury, Bill, come on. There's no question.

WALLACE: Let me switch, if I can, because I'm very -- I'm still confused a little bit about this Pace case, because General Pace, who the president said and Tony Snow here basically said, "Look, it just was too big and too ugly a political fight, and there are so many fights we can get into, and we just weren't going to have a fight with the U.S. Senate and the Democrats there about General Peter Pace.

Then you have the number two Democrat saying, "I don't know why they're not fighting for Peter Pace."

Explain that to me, Brit.

HUME: I think it's hard to explain, frankly, and I think your curiosity is well-founded. I think it's puzzling.

Now, this appears to be a Bob Gates decision. And remember, Pace, whatever else he may be -- and he's quite a guy -- was not a Gates guy. He's a Rumsfeld guy.

And certainly, the possibility exists that Gates may want his own guy, but you can't really make a case against Pace on the strength of the fact that he hasn't served ably. He certainly has. And he's an extraordinary man.

So that may be what's at work here. Otherwise, I think it's -- I agree with you that it's hard to explain.

WILLIAMS: You don't think he could make the case against Peter Pace in terms of the Iraq war and the conduct of this war?

KRISTOL: He had nothing to do with the Iraq war.

WILLIAMS: Of course he did. He was there. He was there from the start.

KRISTOL: I'm sorry, when did he became chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff?

WILLIAMS: He became chairman...

KRISTOL: 2005. We were in Iraq.

WILLIAMS: He was deputy. He was the number two guy, Bill. KRISTOL: OK. So no one who was in the military -- no one who had a senior position in the military while we fought the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq could be confirmed by the United States Senate?

Let me say what happened on Pace, incidentally, which is interesting. And I have no -- I don't have a professional judgment about whether Pace is a better chairman than Mullen.

The Defense Department sent over -- Secretary Gates sent over Pace's name for renomination to the White House, the nomination package, three weeks ago. So he intended to renominate Pace. He told Pace he was going to renominate him.

They pulled it after pressure from Senator Levin, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee. The idea that Bob -- so I have no stake in -- if they decided they didn't want Pace, they shouldn't have sent that over to the White House.

Caving to Senator Levin sends a terrible message, I think.

WILLIAMS: Don't blame the Democrats.

WALLACE: Would you just let somebody else get the last word for a change?

(LAUGHTER)

Thank you, panel. See you next week.

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