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January 04, 2008

Panel Looks At Democratic Race

FOX News Special Report With Brit Hume

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: In New Hampshire, if you give me the same chance that Iowa gave me last night, I truly believe I will be the president of the United States of America!

SEN HILLARY CLINTON, (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: And I did very, very well with people over 45, and I didn't do as well with people under 30. And I take responsibility for that.

JOHN EDWARDS, (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The one thing that's clear from the results in Iowa tonight is the status quo lost and change won!

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HUME: Well, John Edwards may be able to find some comfort in that as he comes into the snowy fields of New Hampshire, but I think the smart money is that the change candidate and the one that will benefit most by the hunger for change that seems to animate Democrats this year is, of course, Barack Obama.

And the question arises now--is there any way that Hillary Clinton can recover the standing, or the momentum, if that's what it was, that she seemed to have in this state? You can throw out all the polls that pre- date Iowa.

We have some thoughts on that from my colleague Chris Wallace of "Fox News Sunday," the host of that program, From Juan Williams, Senior Correspondent, National Public Radio, Bill Kristol, Editor of "The Weekly Standard."

Chris, first to you. Can she do it, and if so, how?

CHRIS WALLACE, FOX NEWS HOST: I think that John Edwards was right. Last night was a vote about status quo or the establishment or experience on the one hand, and change. And change did win. If you add Edwards and Obama together, it's pretty overwhelming. It's about two-thirds of the vote.

According to our entrance polls, Democrats as they went in when they were asked which is more important, change or experience, by about 50 percent to 20 percent, Democrats chose change. That's what they want.

And I watched last night after all the voting was over and the candidates started to come out. First, Obama came out, and he was electric.

HUME: You heard a piece of that there. He was electrifying.

WALLACE: That was from this morning. But from last night in Iowa, it was electric. And all I can describe as is it was Kennedyesque. He was talking about a moment in time and a challenge to the nation.

Then you saw Hillary Clinton. And Hillary Clinton was up on the stage, and on one side of her you saw Bill Clinton and Chelsea, and another side Madeleine Albright. And to me it looked like nothing as much as madam Tuso's wax works. It was a bunch of figures from the 1990's.

I don't know how you can make an argument that you are an agent change when you see the wax works behind you. It is about change, or is it about the Clinton restoration? Because last night it sure looked like the Clinton restoration.

HUME: Juan?

JUAN WILLIAMS, SENIOR CORRESPONDENT, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO: Barack Obama said last night it was a defining moment. And so what we're going to have here in New Hampshire if Hillary Clinton is to recover is a redefining moment. What she is going to do is increase the criticism and scrutiny of Barack Obama.

HUME: Can she safely do that, though, do you think?

WILLIAMS: I think so. The question is, could it become a racial kind of thing? At what point do you start playing racial politics here? I think they have already done that in New Hampshire.

Bill Shaheen, who was her campaign manager here until he was ousted was bringing the issue of drug use in his past, and does this make him more vulnerable to Republican attacks going forward, does it mean he has less of a chance of defeating Republicans.

And I think a lot of people in the black community had a very negative reaction to this, very strong, because it just struck a really sore thumb, if you will, however you want to put it.

What I think she will have to do then is to start to question his experience. We only met this man in 2004.

HUME: But hasn't she been doing that. Isn't that what didn't work in Iowa?

WILLIAMS: What he did is just so incredible to me. He had an aura around him, and we saw it last night--Chris was talking about this speech. Hey an aura around him that seemed as if he was speaking to our inner desire to move beyond racial politics and move beyond partisan politics. He was beyond any kind of political measure or assessment.

Well, she's got to bring him back to ground and say, hey, wait a second, let's really look at who this guy is. He is a guy who in the Illinois legislature was afraid to even make a vote, he would just voting "present" on some key issues.

He is a guy who has only been in the U.S. Senate two years. What has he done? Show me something.

He is a guy that said let's go and talk with the most despotic leaders around the world in an amateurish move. But he is the guy that says, somehow, that we should be going into Pakistan without understanding exactly how we would be stirring the pot.

BILL KRISTOL, EDITOR, "THE WEEKLY STANDARD": She's got one big moment to do that, though, in practice. It won't be done by paid TV commercials in three days. It's not going to be done by newspaper stories. It's going to be done, if it's going to be done at all, in the debate tomorrow.

HUME: Which will be held in the middle of the afternoon--

WILLLIAMS: Tomorrow night.

KRISTOL: Tomorrow night right here at St. Anselm's. People will be watching some of the pro football games.

Nonetheless, it will be the story on the Democratic side of the weekend. On the Republican side, there the debate tomorrow and the debate Chris is moderating on Sunday night. But on the Democratic side, there is only this one debate Saturday. That is her moment. If she does not have a moment where she does what Juan is saying.

She can't just do it in a speech somewhere. She should actually turn to him and say--a version of what Walter Mondale did to Gary Hart: "Where's the beef?"

I don't think she is likely to do it. I would like to try to--

HUME: Do you think it would work if she did?

KRISTOL: No--a lot would depend on his response.

If I was his advisor, I tell him get rested, don't worry about going and doing eight events tomorrow morning, go get sharp for this debate. If he is sharp in this debate, if he takes whatever she throws at him and handles it gracefully and hits back and shows some toughness, he will win.

WALLACE: And that's the point is that she has to be very careful, because he has been so good at political jujitsu, where he uses her force, the force of her strike at him, and turns it around on her.

Think about the moment in the debate in Iowa where the Carol Walkerx, the Nurse Ratched of the "Des Moines Register" asked about--

(CROSSTALK)

Yes, I'm very much studying the tapes for the forum on Sunday night. But where she said how come all of President Clintons' advisors are supporting Hillary, and she said, well, what about that. And she started cackling and saying I want to hear about that. And he said yes, you can advise me, too, Hillary.

HUME: That brought the house down.

WALLACE: That brought the house down and made her look silly. Or the moments when she was talking in the campaign, talked about the fact that even when he was in kindergarten, that he wanted to run for president. He has been using that line today. He has said, man, I haven't been so excited since I was in kindergarten.

HUME: Right.

KRISTOL: Except for that Jefferson Jackson day dinner speech that he gave that was so good, that moment on December 13 in the "Des Moines Register" debate when he turned it on her so effectively, so gracefully, was the key moment in the Iowa campaign. She needs that moment in reverse tomorrow in New Hampshire.

HUME: Juan, you did a very god job of outlining what might be a tough strategy she could take and identified some of the issues. My question to you is, if she tries that, do you think it will work?

WILLIAMS: Remember, we are playing to a different audience in terms of a Democratic base here. I think this is a more highly educated group. You have people who are part of the high-tech crowd that live here in New Hampshire, people coming up from the south and Massachusetts and have homes here, and the like. And I that think they would have a strong reaction to this.

Remember, John Edwards, we haven't even talked about him in this panel. John Edwards basically a non-entity here. So he's not the alternative anymore. It becomes Hillary Clinton versus Barack Obama.

And if people believe that Barack Obama has enough substance that he can spend, and they tap into this dream, this sense of the romance of the guy of the moment, the miracle man, I think it's hard to beat him.

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