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July 02, 2007

Special Report Roundtable - July 2

FOX News Special Report With Brit Hume

HUME: Getting back to the story that we have been covering for most of this hour, the president decided tonight to use his powers of Executive Clemency to commute the sentence, or at least the jail portion of sentence, that was given to Scooter Libby for his conviction for perjury and obstruction of justice in the Valerie Plame case.

That means that the 30 month jail term is gone, but it does not mean that the conviction is overturned--it is not--nor is there a pardon. That has not happened either. In fact, the $250,000 fine that the judge gave Scooter Libby stands, as does the two years in probation, and as does, of course, the conviction.

Some thoughts on all this now from Fred Barnes, executive editor of "The Weekly Standard," Mara Liasson, national political correspondent for National Public Radio, and Mort Kondracke, the executive editor of "Roll Call."

Now, let's take a look at some of the reaction. We have already heard that John Conyers and Chuck Schumer do not like this. Senator Harry Reid has now weighed in with a statement of his own, and he says "The president's decision to commute Mr. Libby's sentence is disgraceful. Libby's conviction was the one faint glimmer of accountability for White House efforts to manipulate intelligence silence critics to the Iraq War. Even that small bit of justice has been undone.

All right, that gives you Harry Reid's view. Fred Thompson, a presidential candidate who was a supporter of Libby likes this, says it is great, and so does Dick Carlson, who was a former ambassador, a well-known guy around town here, who helped to raise money for Libby's defense.

So far, I guess it is fair to say that the reaction has been predictable, but what about this development? This was kind of another sort of a test for the president with his base, right?

FRED BARNES, WEEKLY STANDARD: Yes. Well, he passed so far. And to tell you the truth, I expect the president to follow through with the full pardon--

HUME: Later?

BARNES: --on January 20, 2009, the day he leaves the White House, when presidents usually issue many, many pardons.

HUME: How can he justify a pardon in light of statement he issued tonight, in which he was speaking with some, not reverence, but certainly respect for the jury's verdict, and he asserts in the statement that the jury had found that he lied and it is important not to lie?

BARNES: Well, here is a guy he likes, here is a guy who worked for him. Here is a guy whose conviction, in part, the administration that Bush heads was responsible for, because they allowed a special prosecutor to come in. \

Everybody knows what happened with a special prosecutor. They are accountable to no one. They go on forever. Even this prosecutor, who knew immediately, and got to the bottom of case and knew who had leaked this information about Valerie Plame, the CIA agent, and yet who he continued on and on and on, and eventually snared Libby.

So the Bush administration bears some responsibility here, and I think the president will recognize that--

HUME: Later.

BARNES: Later.

MARA LIASSON, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I don't know if she going to pardon him in 2009. But I do think if he hadn't done this, it would have been very surprising. I think that--I wouldn't be surprised if he ends up pardoning him, but I think that the president, in terms of how this is playing politically, as you saw, the reaction was predictably partisan.

But this is something that is important to the president's base. That is really all he has got left. He is at such low approval ratings right now. I think this is something that is going to be well received. And if he hadn't of done this, if he had let Libby--

HUME: Well received by the base?

LIASSON: Yes. And if he had let Libby to go to jail, I think it would have been a real a problem.

HUME: How will this play more broadly politically, Mort, in your eyes?

MORT KONDRACKE, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, ROLL CALL: Well, I think the country is so polarized that everybody is going to flip the way they do.

Now, what independents are about to say, I suspect that some of them are going to say that this was a good thing to do, and some of them are going to say that it is a bad thing to do.

Personally, I thought that Scooter Libby should serve some jail time. I mean, I think the sentence was excessive, 30 months, it was over the maximum for committing perjury. But it is perjury, it is a national security case, at least, and the even the White House, as you pointed out, had lawyers look at the full transcript of the case, and the president concluded, and his aides concluded on basis of that, that Scooter Libby did lie.

So a perjury was committed here, and it seems to me that he should have served time for it, but not as much as he was sentenced to.

HUME: So you are a Republican who is not in a safe seat, not in a safe district, you are up for re-election next year, how do you regard this? Do you endorse what the president has done? Do you criticize it? What are they going to do?

KONDRACKE: I would think a Republican in a not safe seat would say the president has split the difference here. Scooter Libby is going to be punished, the president did not pardon him. And if I'm a Republican saying this, I stand with the president on this one. Maybe I would have had him serve a little bit of jail type. Something like that.

HUME: You have to credit Mort's ability to identify with the Republicans, give him credit for that.

KONDRACKE: I can do it with the Democrats, too.

BARNES: You know, there is one thing that Mort can portray well, and that is a mushy moderate Republican.

KONDRACKE: And a swing Democrat, too.

BARNES: That was pretty good.

I think he is right. This isn't going to lose office for anybody, or win office for anybody, either. My favorite statement was the one by Barack Obama, who denounced, in a very partisan statement, denounced the bitter partisanship that this commutation reflected.

LIASSON: Look, the people who really care about this on the right are going to be happy that the president did it. And the people who really care about it on the other side aren't going to be voting for him, or any Republicans, any time soon anyway.

HUME: In other words, he had nothing to lose by doing it, and, probably, something to gain by his base.

LIASSON: Yes.

KONDRACKE: And one other point here, look, there are so many rich Republicans around who can help Scooter Libby pay this fine, which they will do, that it minimizes considerably the sting of any punishment--

HUME: Well, it certainly minimized the financial sting, but how does he stand now as a lawyer? How does he stand as a guy who is going to need work?

KONDRACKE: He will get work. Somebody will give him work.

HUME: Where do you think he will end up, at a conservative think tank?

KONDRACKE: Something like that, sure.

BARNES: He's already connected with one, and he will get a bigger role, no question about that.

Look, he is a very smart guy, and very brilliant in foreign affairs and national security.

KONDRACKE: And he has got a great book to write.

HUME: When we come back, speaking of Barack Obama, he set a new record. John McCain has to shake up his staff again. We will talk about what the money means for the presidential campaigns, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. BARACK OBAMA (D), ILLINOIS: It's a wonderful thing, because we have got 250,000 people who have donated to our campaign, that we have got people who have been giving $5, and $10, and $25.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: And why is that such a great thing? Well, the reason that is such a great thing is that when people in that number are giving amounts of money that small, it means you can go back to those people time and time again, and they can still keep contributing because they are not anywhere near the legal maximum of campaign contributions.

And he got from that 250,000 assembly of contributors did Barack Obama, something on the order of $31 million in the last quarter, beating Hillary Clinton, who had a pretty good quarter herself, by $10 million in raising money for the primary season.

So, she continues to lead in the polls, pretty much across the board, and by a substantial margin, but something is obviously up with Barack Obama and the excitement he has engendering among a great many people.

So what about this, Mara? What does this tell us on the democratic side? Does it tell of that the shape of race might soon change, or simply that Obama's, obviously, going to be in it a while?

LIASSON: Well, it tells us that this is, I think, fast becoming a two-person race. The other piece of news today, of course, is that John Edwards is way down at $9 million. Now that is not nothing, and he is strong in the polls in Iowa, and he has camped out there in the last four years.

But I think it means that the effort of Clinton campaign to make her nomination inevitable, and I think there was a conventional wisdom that was beginning to congeal around that topic has been obliterated. I mean, Barack Obama now has raised more money overall, even including the $10 million that she transferred from her Senate campaign, he has raised more money than her overall, and he can be on the air with her, kind of toe to toe, in every one of these states.

HUME: He hasn't really moved the needle in the polls that much. He did it first, he had a big surge.

LIASSON: Yes, and then he kind of flat lined. By five in south Carolina, he is ahead, in Iowa he is right on her heels, in other words, in Iowa they are all bunched up together, and in New Hampshire he is behind, and nationally he is behind, and the but some of the other big primary states that vote on February 5.

It depends on how much credence you put in polls at this point of the race.

HUME: And which polls, and whether it is a state poll or a national poll.

LIASSON: And we still have a long way to go. I don't think a lot of people are going to start paying attention until the fall. And he has the resources to, perhaps, change their minds.

KONDRACKE: Now, I agree with that. He is in the race, and he is in the race right along with her, and we will have to see what the performance is like as we get closer to the actual event.

As many people pointed out, this is a sequential kind of thing. You do well in Iowa, whatever that means, and you carry that momentum on to New Hampshire and Nevada and South Carolina, and so on, and things build on themselves.

And he has what it takes to make a splash in Iowa. He can pay for the staff, he can put the ads on the air, he can get people to the caucuses, and so on. And he can do the same thing in New Hampshire, and so on.

Walter Shapiro of salon.com had an interesting observation, however, and that is that suddenly Florida is trying to insert itself into this picture as the fourth event. Before Super-Tuesday on February 5, where Hillary should do very well among--

HUME: Because she has a well established national campaign.

KONDRACKE: And Jews and older people tend to be her kind of people. And it would be the same day as South Carolina, where you have the heavy African American vote, which, presumably, would be Obama's strong point.

So that would be--if that happens, that would help Hilary.

HUME: That would be something that might break the momentum of Obama.

BARNES: I didn't follow all that, but, look, here is what it means. It means New Hampshire and Iowa don't mean as much any more. Look, we always knew Obama had enough money to compete fully in New Hampshire and in Iowa before that. But what this means is he can lose them, and he has the money to compete in all those big primaries on January 29 and February 5.

HUME: I want to draw you out on the subject of John McCain. He has had a disappointing quarter after an earlier disappointing quarter. This one appears to be worse. He is now going to have to lay off staff. He is going to have people working for nothing.

How bad is it?

BARNES: It's bad. But, look, all people have to do is remember John Kerry in 2003. He was running this lousy campaign right up until he won the Iowa caucuses and then New Hampshire. This means that it is a tough road for McCain, but still in the race.

HUME: Do you agree?

LIASSON: Yes, he is still in the race, but it's going to be very tough. He is down to $2 million cash on hand, and he is thinking about taking public financing, which will only get him $6 million.

KONDRACKE: But this sequential thing works for him, now. He has got a minimalist campaign going. Instead of campaigning in all these multiple states February 5, and putting staff on ground in Michigan, and places like that, he can't do that. He has got to go to Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada, and concentrate there, and hope that he can do the John Kerry thing.

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