Post Politics Hour

washingtonpost.com's Daily Politics Discussion

Don't want to miss out on the latest in politics? Start each day with The Post Politics Hour. Join in each weekday morning at 11 a.m. as a member of The Washington Post's team of White House and congressional reporters answers questions about the latest in buzz in Washington and The Post's coverage of political news.

Washington Post White House reporter Peter Baker was online Friday, Nov. 16 at 11 a.m. ET to discuss the latest news in politics.

The transcript follows.

Get the latest campaign news live on washingtonpost.com's The Trail, or subscribe to a podcast of the show.

Archive: Post Politics Hour discussion transcripts

____________________

Peter Baker: Good morning, everyone. President Bush is meeting with Japan's new prime minister, the Senate just rejected no-strings funding for the Iraq war as well as a troop-withdrawal plan and the Democratic presidential candidates are hitting the slots after their debate in Las Vegas last night. Lots to chew on, so let's get started.

_______________________

Charlotte, N.C.: I was struck by how many people in the audience were definitely pro-Clinton. Rather unfair to the other candidates. Do you know why that was?

washingtonpost.com: Democratic Contenders Step Up Attacks in Debate (Post, Nov. 16)

Peter Baker: It did seem like a pro-Clinton crowd. Did you notice she was the only one hanging around on stage long after it was over still surrounded by people seeking autographs? I don't really know how that happened. It's only unfair to other candidates if the audience was deliberately stacked that way. If that's reflective of the broader sentiment in the Democratic electorate, then that's politics, isn't it?

_______________________

Washington: Your story on the appropriations veto this week was typical Washington Post, just another opportunity for White House spin. Now we're supposed to believe that this provides an opportunity for Bush to resurrect his image like Clinton did in 1995. Don't hold your breath. And speaking of holding, I think we're all still waiting for that "Bolten Bounce" The Post assured us was on the way.

washingtonpost.com: Bush Veto Sets Up Clash on Budget (Post, Nov. 14)

Peter Baker: Thanks for the critique. I appreciate your feedback. Just to be clear, though, I don't think we said this was an opportunity for Bush to resurrect his image like Clinton did, I think we said Bush WANTS to use it to do that. We didn't weigh in on whether it will work or not. As for a "Bolten bounce," if memory serves, again we said last year when Josh Bolten became White House chief of staff that that's what the White House was hoping for. When it didn't happen, we reported that too.

_______________________

Pittsburgh: What are the prospects for the education and health bill that President Bush vetoed this week for $606 billion? Can the veto be overridden, or can Capitol Hill and the White House forge a compromise? The difference between $606 billion and the $596 billion Bush finds acceptable is less than 1.7 percent, which seems an awfully insignificant difference on a percentage basis, as well as trivial compared to the amounts for the Iraq War the past four and a half years.

Peter Baker: The House voted last night 277 to 141 to override, which fell just two votes short of the two-thirds necessary. It's not clear what the compromise will be, assuming there will be one. Democrats yesterday said they want to combine the remaining spending bills into a single package and split the difference with the president -- overall, he has complained that they are $22 billion over his budget; they suggested coming in at $11 billion. The White House stood firm against that too. So we're in a high-stakes game of chicken here at the moment.

_______________________

Kensington, Md.: In Thursday's Post Lois Romano paints a rich portrait of Rudy Giuliani's "loyal inner circle." In the wake of the Kerik revelations it worries me that a large segment of America seems about to embrace the same backroom cronyism that we have had in the White House for these past seven years. Because nobody in the media has yet seen fit to ask the current jobholder this, would you think it unreasonable for reporters to bluntly demand of Mr. Giuliani: "To whom do you feel a higher loyalty -- to your longtime friends, or to the country?" If the media cannot ask this impolite question, then in my view they no longer have any reason to exist. Thank you.

washingtonpost.com: Inside a Kingdom of Allegiances (Post, Nov. 15)

Peter Baker: Oh, I think we ask plenty of impertinent questions, no worries about that. We don't always get illuminating answers, alas. Certainly reporters questioned Mayor Giuliani about his judgment of the people around him when his former police commissioner, Bernie Kerik, was indicted last week, and it's a topic that I'm sure will continue to come up, particularly as the trial approaches. What Giuliani has said is he made a mistake. Voters will have to judge how serious it was.

_______________________

Annandale, Va.: What would happen in a real budget showdown where the Congress passes a war budget with strings attached and the president vetoes it. Could the military be forced to bring home troops? Wouldn't it cost money to bring them home anyway? Could the president just keep the troops there and not feed them?

Peter Baker: It's a good question and we haven't gotten to that point yet, obviously. The Pentagon has said the current funding for the war would start to run out in mid-February. There's some reprogramming of money the Pentagon can do, I gather, from regular operating funds, and the president just signed this week the annual Defense Department appropriations bill. But you're right that even a pullout would cost money that is not currently appropriated, so there would be a real question about what comes next.

_______________________

Prescott, Ariz.: A comment: I know there was just a poll that said the American people want more policy coverage in the Presidential race. That said, we almost had a few policy discussions in the debate last night, but every time one started to develop, the debate moderator(s) insisted on interjecting to get on to some vapid yes/no question. (And why can't anyone ask whether they think illegal immigrants should be able to get jobs? That is the real immigration issue.) And even when the audience members asked some questions that were geared toward getting real policy contrasts, the moderators always insisted on stealing the audience member's thunder and reframing their questions in some (again vapid) yes/no manner. We could do with less questions and more good answers.

Peter Baker: Thanks for the comment. You make some good points here. At some point, these debates have been frustrating to many people who want more and dislike some of the style of questioning. At the same time, have some sympathy for the moderators who are stuck trying to be fair to seven candidates, on the Democratic side, and more on the Republican side. It's hard to have a meaningful, substantive conversation when you have to let seven people answer. These debates, I imagine, would grow better once the field thins out.

_______________________

Northville, Mich.: No offense to the guy, but why is Dennis Kucinich still in the race? He has the lowest poll showings of all the Dems and some of the lowest fundraising. Is it just about raising issues, or does he actually think he has a shot? (Even last night in the debate he admitted he was a long-shot candidate.)

Peter Baker: I don't know him personally, so it's hard to deduce motivation. I do imagine he cares about the issues he's raising and given that he's taking the hardest line on many of them he may feel his voice influences the debate even if he has no chance of winning. If memory serves, he stayed in the 2004 race longer than most of the genuinely viable candidates did as well, so I wouldn't expect him to drop out anytime soon necessarily.

_______________________

Arlington, Va.: The Congress is seeking to do something about the AMT by crating a revenue-neutral bill. The president has threatened to veto it because it raises taxes on somebody. If the bill is not revenue-neutral, it would elevate the national debt. Is this problem with debt a real issue or just some economic technicality?

Peter Baker: Well, it's two different approaches at this point. The Democrats came into office in January promising to restore fiscal discipline and enacting "pay as you go" policy requiring that any spending or tax cuts be offset by cutting other spending or raising taxes. President Bush has agreed to additional spending without offsets when it comes to the war while trying lately in particular to squeeze other non-security domestic programs. Bush has not always opposed raising some taxes to reduce others; a couple months back, he floated the idea of a revenue-neutral corporate tax reform package that would lower corporate tax rates and pay for it by eliminating narrowly targeted tax breaks. In this case, though, he has refused to go along with raising taxes on fund equity managers and other Wall Street types to pay for exempting many middle and upper-middle class taxpayers from the alternative minimum tax.

_______________________

The gender card?: Hillary got a good one in last night just by saying Campbell Brown's first name when the one female questioner among the three asked the frontrunner what she meant in her address to the students of her alma mater, Wellesley, when she spoke of "the all-boys club of presidential politics." "Campbell..." Hillary began. Translation: "Like, really, just between us girlfriends, are you gonna tell me you don't know what it means to crack an all-boys club?"

Peter Baker: It's an interesting line she is trying to walk. One of the things that has been so fascinating about this campaign until recently is that Hillary Clinton largely was judged on her strengths and weaknesses as a political leader and not thought of "the woman candidate." At the same time, obviously, she has tried to subtly capitalize on the notion that her election would be a historic breakthrough. Her campaign tries to complain that it's somehow wrong that seven men are attacking her, when of course if she were a male frontrunner, seven men would still be attacking her. She retreated from that grievance last night, saying, "People are not attacking me because I'm a woman; they're attacking me because I'm ahead."

_______________________

These debates, I imagine, would grow better once the field thins out.: I agree. But with the compressed primary schedule, how many debates will we see with maybe just two or three candidates from either party?

Peter Baker: Hard to say, obviously. At this point, none of the second-tier guys seem prepared to drop out and the networks are reluctant to exclude anyone (though Mike Gravel did get the boot eventually). I would imagine we would see a shrinking of the field sometime after Iowa and New Hampshire but before the mega primary on Feb. 5.

_______________________

Washington: "It did seem like a pro-Clinton crowd." I believe at the beginning of the debate, Wolf Blitzer did say the audience purposefully was made up of undecided Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents.

Peter Baker: Well, that could mean many of them weren't genuinely undecided or perhaps many of them were genuinely impressed by Senator Clinton. At a certain point, when you have a way-out-in-front leader in a political field, you can see a bandwagon effect as everyone decides to jump with a perceived "winner." At the same time, I can't think of a frontrunner who won a major party nomination without a major stumble or full-blown crisis, so the questions are: how does she handle it if and when that happens and is anyone else out there prepared to capitalize on it?

_______________________

Fort Washington, Md.: At what point do the other candidates become so obsessed with Hillary that it hurts them? I missed the debates last night but in reading the article in today's paper it appears Edwards and Obama talked about Hillary more than actual issues. It's getting tired. She's all they talk about. I know they can differentiate themselves from her other ways beside seemingly snide disparagements.

Peter Baker: Look at it from their point of view. They tried it all year to gain traction without really going after Senator Clinton and she rocketed way out in front. So simply explaining their own positions, in their view, hasn't worked and something else is now required. This is classic campaigning, nothing out of the ordinary at all. At a certain point when it looks like an electorate is settling on a candidate, if you're another contender you have to find a way to convince voters that they're making a mistake.

_______________________

Stewartstown, Pa.: The Hillary immigration/drivers license question is why I'm losing patience with complaints that politicians aren't honest and genuine. What was really wrong about Hillary's answer on that? It is a complicated issue. In real life, most issues are complicated, and cannot be answered in a few words or with a cheap slogan. In a democracy, politicians need to win public approval to get into power. We can't fault them for not being honest if we're just going to reject them when they are. What gives?

Peter Baker: I think the issue wasn't that it's a complicated issue, it was that she seemed to be taking two sides on it within the space of a few minutes. At one point in the last debate, she appeared to be agreeing with Governor Spitzer that it was the right thing to do. Then when her rivals criticized her for that, she said, wait, she didn't say she's for it. If you're going to run for the highest office in the land, the standard is pretty high for having a clear, coherent answer for questions that you ought to know will be asked.

_______________________

Philadelphia: Ok, I'm showing my age here, but ... back in the 1960s, wasn't it typical for lots of presidential candidates to be campaigning for the nomination of their party, and for them to be engaged in differentiating themselves from each other in order to get the best (i.e. "most electable") candidate to run? So, isn't what's happening now with Democrats and Republicans a return to past politics, and not the "business as usual," "foreordained" runners that we've seen since the 1980s? I'm finding it refreshing and a better demonstration of our democracy than anything I've seen in years. Go for it!

Peter Baker: Sure. This seems like pretty normal politics to me. You've got the most wide-open presidential election of our lifetimes (except for those of you around to vote in 1928) so it's natural you would have lots of candidates out there campaigning vigorously. The rough-and-tumble comes with the territory and, frankly, it hasn't seemed all that rough or tumbling to me yet. If anything, it's been pretty tame.

_______________________

Obama: faulty: Obama did a great job discussing the Iraq surge during the debate; he was clear and firm that the surge was working to stem violence, as more troops will intrinsically do, but that nothing was changing on the political front. But the rest of the debate saw him stumble over his own details on a number of points. At what point will Obama realize that subtlety at these debates is not only impractical, but hurtful when you're cut off mid-answer or overrun by the crowd? His inability to shift his debate performance is worrisome. Last night Obama displayed a level of ineptitude and stubbornness that turned off at least one supporter.

Peter Baker: Thanks for the input. It is interesting how Sen. Obama has not been able to translate the exceptional energy he conveys in a speech format, when he's among the most eloquent politicians out there, to a debate setting, where he does not stand out so much. I'm not sure what that's about but you can bet his campaign strategists are tearing their hair out trying to figure it out.

_______________________

Vienna, Va.: Nevada has polled 51 percent for Clinton, so I'm not sure about all the queries about a "stacked audience."

Peter Baker: Thanks for the data point.

_______________________

Baltimore: Re Giuliani's loyalty: It's much more than that that's troubling. What I don't understand is why the mayor elevated Kerik -- who had been his driver, for heaven's sake -- to be police commissioner. That's quite a jump in rank. By the way, I learned from the New York Daily News that Giuliani named New York's famous jail, popularly known as The Tombs, after his pal Kerik. It has since reverted to its former name.

Peter Baker: Well, he had a few stops between being driver and police commissioner, but yes, that's something that has been scrutinized. On the other hand, lots of politicians end up putting people in very important positions based on their perceived talent, skill and loyalty rather than experience. President Bill Clinton made George Stephanopoulos and a whole host of young thirtysomethings called the "Kiddie Corps" in charge of big swaths of the White House. President Bush has likewise been surrounded by young people with little prior experience, such as his now-former counselor Dan Bartlett. These people can be very valuable to a political leader even if they have not spent decades in the trenches. The difference is that Kerik, if we're to believe the indictment, was engaging in corruption along the way and so the question is how did Giuliani miss that.

_______________________

Columbia, S.C.: I am not sure that there is much out there that Clinton hasn't seen. She has been raked over the coals since Bill became president and everything that she has done since then has been examined with a fine-toothed comb by prosecutors, news media, right-wing dirt throwers, fellow politicians, etc. So I am not sure that there will be a big stumbling block unless she loses one of the first big primaries.

Peter Baker: She has certainly seen the inside of the pressure cooker in a way probably no other non-incumbent presidential candidate has, and you're right, the 1990s brought all sorts of barbs and arrows, rightly or wrongly, so she knows how to take it. But that doesn't mean you get a free pass to a major party nomination. You can think of all sorts of things that would trip up her (or any frontrunner). One of those could be losing an early state such as Iowa, where she's currently locked in a close contest with Sen. Obama and Sen. Edwards. That happened to George W. Bush; his crucible in the 2000 primaries was losing to Sen. McCain in New Hampshire. He had to pick himself up and mount a comeback. What Sen. Clinton's crucible will be, I don't know, but something will happen that will challenge her more seriously than a clumsy answer in a debate.

_______________________

Madison, Wis.: Is there any chance that a debate will be moderated by an impartial group like the League of Women Voters? It seems the moderators want this on their resumes and, of course, their time in the spotlight. The moderators are getting more on-camera time with lengthy questions -- and wanting yes/no answers -- than many of the candidates.

Peter Baker: I think the days of the League of Women Voters sponsoring debates, at least in the primaries, are over. By the way, I agree that some of the yes-or-no questions are hokey or oversimplified. But on the other hand, one function of a good moderator is to force candidates to take a position and not let them filibuster around a tough question. In a previous debate, I recall Senator Clinton being asked if she would support U.S. troops in Darfur and she talked around it without answering. The moderator (I'm forgetting who) came back and repeated the question, yes or no, would she support U.S. troops in Darfur. On the third try, if I remember correctly, the moderator finally got a straight answer and she said no, she would not.

_______________________

As a speech writer: Here is what I wrote while Obama was fumbling over the immigrant issue: Personal safety. Driver's license equals documentation, registration, insurance and taxes. What's so hard about making that the talking point?

Peter Baker: There may be a job there for you! Thanks for the input.

_______________________

Peter Baker: Thanks everyone for a great chat today. Have a terrific weekend and a wonderful Thanksgiving.

_______________________

Editor's Note: washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions. washingtonpost.com is not responsible for any content posted by third parties.