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 congressional reporter Jonathan Weisman was online Friday, Dec. 14 at 11 a.m. ET to discuss the latest news in politics.

The transcript follows.

Read Chris Cillizza's blog, The Fix

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

____________________

Jonathan Weisman: Well, after a grueling four-day week on Capitol Hill, the Senate prepares to pass a farm bill, the House is taking a long weekend ahead, and I'm on the Hill ready to answer your questions. So here we go!

_______________________

New York: Jonathan, Mark Penn was "Karl Rove" before Karl Rove was Karl Rove. Why are reporters quick to discuss Rove's fingerprints on slime but not similarly Penn's? Do Penn's right-wing Mideast politics have anything to do with this?

Jonathan Weisman: Okay, at the risk of being attacked mercilessly, I cannot see how Mark Penn is Karl Rove. First of all, everything Mark Penn does, he seems to send a memo out on. Second, he just isn't that charismatic. If you think otherwise, give me some examples.

_______________________

Woodbridge, Va.: Why should Hillary apologize for saying the Republicans will attack Obama for his cocaine use? Last time I checked cocaine was illegal. Surely a candidate is allowed to criticize his opponent for criminal behavior. The Republicans are attacking Obama for being Muslim, which is clearly not true, so it's a given they will attack him for his admitted drug use.

Jonathan Weisman: Barack Obama's whole appeal is his position as a "post-partisan" leader, not willing to engage in the petty name-calling that marked the '90s and 2000s. Bill Shaheen's raising the drug issue was not so much illegitimate as impolitic. It played right into Obama's hands at a pivotal moment. He should be apologizing to her.

_______________________

Fairfax, Va.: Hi Jonathan. So the Democrats have spent a lot of time discussing how their health care plans will expand coverage to all or almost all the Americans without health insurance. But what about the problem of how much we as a nation spend on health care. It's like 18 percent of GDP, which is a lot more than everybody else. How do the Democrats plan to address that problem?

Jonathan Weisman: That will be the biggest attacking point on the Democratic plans -- not enough cost containment. But they would say the federal government has been perhaps better than the insurance companies at wringing out concessions from the doctors and pharmaceutical companies. More government involvement could help hold down costs.

But your point is salient.

_______________________

'08 race the earliest ever?: Hi Jonathan. For some unknown reason I picked up a book off my bookshelf recently -- "The Choice" by Bob Woodward, which chronicled the 1996 election from the primaries to the general. In reading it I've realized that it's just not true when many say that this year's election is the "earliest ever." Woodward writes about Dole and Gov. Wilson and Quayle debating whether to run or not, and detailed how they began raising money and going to events as early as '94-'95. I think the truth is that the media this year was reporting on it earlier than ever, fueled by the Internet and cable channels. Regardless, the process of the election always has begun two or more years before the actual election. Your thoughts?

Jonathan Weisman: Yes, the fundraising and posturing went on early. That's what spawned what is now known as the permanent campaign. But this year has been unique on the actual events of the campaign, the earliest debates, the earliest primaries. The shadow campaign burst into public earlier then ever.

_______________________

San Francisco: Why is Harry Reid ignoring the Judiciary Committee's FISA bill and bringing up the SSCI bill? Is telecom amnesty that important to Sen. Reid? If so, why?

Jonathan Weisman: A very good question. Reid has said he will bring up the Intel Committee bill, then allow advocates of the Judiciary Committee bill to bring up theirs as a substitute. That's a big blow, because it will take 60 votes even to consider a vote on the Judiciary version.

Reid says he opposes retroactive immunity for the telecommunications companies, but he seems to be stacking the decks for it. Some folks in and out of the Senate are pressuring him to change the order. We will see.

_______________________

Wheaton, Md.: Amidst the predictable (after the build-up) Huckabee-bashing fest the media has held the past few days, something from the Iowa GOP debate kind of got swept under the rug. Rudy Giuliani asserted that the charging of his mistress's security expenses to those obscure city agencies actually helped their transparency. I listened on C-SPAN so I didn't get to see how far the moderator's jaw dropped on that one. Has anyone asked him to explain this, um, spin?

Jonathan Weisman: Yes, that was round two of explanations -- blame the police department. I think he's way beyond that, round four or five. I'm not sure the state of excuses at this point.

_______________________

Chicago: Thanks for taking questions. Okay, the last debates before the Iowa caucuses are over and the caucuses are about three weeks away. What will the candidates (mainly Hillary, Barack, John, Mitt and Mike) be doing in Iowa to pull out the badly needed win? We won't be seeing what they are doing there, so I am just curious what the candidates will be doing to try to win Iowa.

Jonathan Weisman: Hillary's in a world of hurt. She wanted to go negative on Obama. Her campaign manager in New Hampshire overplayed his hand, and now she's trying to make nice. I assume she'll try to build back her New Hampshire fire wall, while maintaining a more conventional campaign in Iowa. Romney will go negative on Huckabee, bashing him on immigration, and McCain will hope he's the last man standing as the others drop to the mat, bloodied by intraparty bashing.

_______________________

Vienna, Va.: Have any of the Democratic candidates specifically addressed how they will deal with the laws and policies that Bush has implemented that are against our Constitution?

Jonathan Weisman: That's an interesting question. The Democrats really have avoided a lot of specifics on things like domestic, warrantless wiretapping, fearful of being tarred weak on terror -- but they have said they don't like waterboarding. I'm interested in what they'll do when all of Bush's tax cuts expire and the entire tax code turns into a pumpkin at midnight, Dec. 31, 2010. Not hearing much on that either.

_______________________

Reading, Pa.: Have any of the candidates come out with a position on the deteriorating situations in Pakistan or Darfur? What good is all this posturing and punditry if we don't get relevant info on how a candidate would react to some of these pressing issues?

Jonathan Weisman: Well, Obama did say he would send U.S. troops into western Pakistan, but that was before the state of emergency was called. I'd imagine he'd change his tune now.

_______________________

Tacoma, Wash.: As a congressional reporter, do you ever get tired of answering questions only about the presidential campaign? Also, which Senate seat is the most as risk in the 2008 election?

Jonathan Weisman: Nah, I fully understand nobody much cares about what's going on up here.

Obviously, the most at-risk seat is John Warner's in Virginia, which almost certainly is going to Mark Warner, former governor. I'd say the second and third most-endangered are the open Republican seats in New Mexico and Colorado. The most vulnerable incumbent is John Sununu, a Republican in bluish New Hampshire, but watch Mary Landrieu, Democrat in Louisiana. She's the Republican's best chance at a pick-up.

_______________________

Tacoma, Wash.: The house passed a bill yesterday outlawing waterboarding and other harsh "torture" methods. Will it get any play in the Senate, or has Bush's threats of veto already shot it down? Also, on the discussion of the CIA outsourcing the torture to countries like Egypt, will this outlet give the CIA an out so they can continue the torture?

washingtonpost.com: House Passes Bill to Ban CIA's Use of Harsh Interrogation Tactics (Post, Dec. 14)

Jonathan Weisman: It'll get a vote, but it needs 60 votes and I don't see it happening. If John McCain were not running for president, he probably would be on the Senate floor, pushing hard for its passage. He'd rope in a few Republicans, like Lindsey Graham, Chuck Hagel and John Warner. Without McCain, I don't see it passing.

_______________________

Charles Town W.Va.: Just a quick comment about the outrage that the campaign of Sen. Clinton -- she of "stop the politics of personal destruction" fame -- would bring up Sen. Obama's past drug use: hypocrisy, not money, is the mother's milk of politics.

Jonathan Weisman: I've heard that before.

_______________________

Salinas, Calif.: Hi Jonathan. So, besides bestowing a badge of honor on their respective GOP resumes, can we anticipate any actual consequences for Rove and Bolten over receiving contempt citations from the Senate Judiciary Committee?

Jonathan Weisman: Here's the way it would have to go. The Senate would need 60 votes to overcome Republican efforts to keep the contempt motion from even reaching the Senate floor. If -- as is very unlikely -- it clears that hurdle, the contempt citation would go to the U.S. attorney of the District of Columbia, who would empanel a grand jury to decide whether to indict. But that U.S. attorney is a Bush appointee who got his job in the same legal loophole that prompted the firing of the U.S. attorneys in the first place, and he can drag his feet for a long time.

In other words, don't hold your breath.

_______________________

Washington: How does Rudy Giuliani blow off the early primaries and essentially start his campaign in Florida? Doesn't that give his rivals time to diminish his effectiveness?

Jonathan Weisman: Giuliani figured the Super-Duper Tuesday thing Feb. 5 was sufficiently close to the Iowa caucuses, New Hampshire primary and South Carolina to overcome losses in those early states. I think he now understands he may be wrong, especially as his own lead in the national polls begins to slip. He's in trouble.

_______________________

Re: Shaheen's comments: I disagree strenuously that they were not "illegitimate." If he had stopped with just talking about use, that would have been a kind of dirty but legitimate way of introducing a negative issue about your opponent. Raising the possibility of drug dealing, though, was simply beyond acceptable. No one raised the issue of drug dealing with Clinton's pot smoking or Bush's cocaine use. If there is anything different about these situations other than Obama's skin color, I've yet to hear one. The Clinton campaign should know that if I -- and I think many other Democratic voters -- thought that her campaign had okayed the comment about dealing, I wouldn't vote for her in the general election, let alone the primary.

Jonathan Weisman: Okay. It was a little slippery to put it all in the context that Republicans will make the charge -- a way of leveling the accusation without taking ownership.

_______________________

Albany, N.Y.: Seems to me that Hillary has no credibility to attack anyone on drug use, given her husband's history -- and that is the underlying problem, in addition to the fact that George Bush's alcoholism and drug use have made this "issue" irrelevant. Also Hillary, by pushing the issue, opened herself up to the same question of whether she ever has used illegal drugs. Just an overall dumb move in a Democratic primary where many of the voters probably have used illegal drugs themselves

Jonathan Weisman: Huh? Do you know something I don't know about Hillary and drugs, or Bill, for that matter? "I didn't inhale" is not the same as cocaine use. We now have had one, probably two, presidents who smoked pot. We haven't had one who did the hard stuff.

_______________________

Washington: You seem to know tax policy well, so what bugs you more: Giuliani running on a loopy "if we cut taxes, government revenues will go up!" platform, or Huckabee claiming we can replace all our taxes with a sales tax (that really would have to be a 50 percent sales tax or even higher)?

Jonathan Weisman: The latter. Oooh, the Fair Tax burns me up. I will tell you, if we instituted a national sales tax that brought in the same amount of revenue we get now, study after study says it would have to be set somewhere around 25 percent -- and that assumes sales taxes on houses, cars, food, etc. Every prominent economist I know (including a heckuva lot of Republicans and George Bush's tax reform commission) says it's utterly unadministrable. The day you institute it is the day you get a black market, with people offering you "bargains" -- selling goods for a discount without reporting the sales to the tax authorities.

I was just in the Czech Republic and all the stores were doing that to skirt an 8 percent VAT. What would happen with a 25 percent sales tax? It's crazy.

_______________________

Dallas: I care! I care! ... Actually, I care that nothing is happening up there. The Dems seem to give Bush everything he wants. Oh, there's a bit of posturing, but no real pushback. I understand they are fighting short-term losing battles, but do they understand they're also losing the long-term war?

Jonathan Weisman: Thanks for caring, Dallas. The new line, trotted out by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi now is "we're really sorry, but the experience of this year tells you one thing -- elect a Democratic president and more Democratic senators." The white flag is aloft.

_______________________

Odenton, Md.: This is more of a comment than a question ... as a long-time reader of American Institute of Philanthropy's reports, I was glad to see The Post reporting on just how bad veterans charities are about giving money to vets. They are some of the worst charities out there. But there are also very poorly ranked children's charities and others. I think we also need a discussion about how much the CEOs from some of these charities and non-profits make, because it can be sickening.

washingtonpost.com: Panel Probes Spending Of Veterans Charities (Post, Dec. 14)

Jonathan Weisman: Thank you for your careful reading of the paper.

_______________________

Princeton, N.J.: Over and over again, John McCain (and others) say tax cuts increase tax revenue, and over and over again Douglas Holtz-Eakin, his chief economic advisor, has to try and bail him out. Why don't reporters make a bigger issue out of this very important economic lie so that McCain (and others) will not continue to lie?

Jonathan Weisman: Ah Prof. Krugman, the old dynamic scoring debate. I personally have written a lot of stories on this. But consider this. When the Bush tax cuts passed in 2001, then were amplified in 2003, the Congressional Budget Office (under director Holtz-Eakin) predicted we would be dropping off a budget cliff by 2007. Instead, the budget deficit is about $160 billion. If it wasn't for the war and Katrina, we'd basically be in balance. Revenue has surged far ahead of Congressional Budget Office predictions.

Now, I wouldn't be foolish enough to say the economic growth and surging corporate tax receipts are because of the tax cuts, as Republicans say. But it is food for thought.

_______________________

Tacoma, Wash.: I see Reid is keeping the Senate open (and Jim Webb busy) through the Christmas holidays to prevent recess appointments. Is there a history of this, prior to Reid doing it during Thanksgiving?

Jonathan Weisman: Not really. Reid had threatened to do it this summer, but reached an agreement with the White House not to make recess appointments. He didn't get that deal over Thanksgiving. Now, I fear, we have a precedent. Beware of precedence -- a Democratic president will have to deal with it some day.

_______________________

Re: We haven't had one who did the hard stuff.: Really? At the very least we have a president who has dismissed any and all inquiries on this subject with "when I was young and foolish, I was young and foolish." That seems to have bought him a pass.

Jonathan Weisman: I said we probably had two who smoked weed. But I can't go that far out on a limb. I'll get whacked.

_______________________

Anonymous: Come on, back when Dick Cheney had hair, I bet he was totally into the hard stuff! Kidding, kidding -- don't want you to get in trouble, Jonathan!

Jonathan Weisman: Please, don't bait me.

_______________________

Re: Rudy: This chat rocks! If Rudy is in trouble, who do you think benefits most from this and why?

Jonathan Weisman: Excellent question. I think if John McCain can stay afloat, he's the most likely beneficiary. He's the moderate voice with the pro-defense stance.

_______________________

Baltimore: How many more retirements do you see coming before the election season really starts? How long (realistically) before the election does an incumbent need to announce her retirement? I can't recall ever seeing so many open seats. Is this it, or is there more coming?

Jonathan Weisman: We really thought a lot would come over Thanksgiving, but we're only up to about 18 or 19 in the House, five in the Senate. That's still a pretty good amount, but in the House, it's actually about average. Still, the pressure's on a few endangered Republicans, like John Doolittle in California, to get out of dodge and let new GOP blood step in.

_______________________

Fife, Wash.: Not a single significant National was named in Mitchell's Report yesterday. Is that good, bad or expected, considering the success of the Nats?

washingtonpost.com: Lo Duca Linked to Steroid Purchases (Post, Dec. 14)

Jonathan Weisman: Did you really think the Washington Nationals were full of juiced-up steroid heads? Just look at them!

_______________________

Princeton, N.J.: First the Republicans tried to legislate the Iraq Inspector general out of existence, now they have the FBI investigating him. Have they no shame?

Jonathan Weisman: I don't know. Some of the accusations didn't look good. And I trust Robin Wright not to be used the way you are suggesting.

_______________________

Longmont, Colo.: I have a sense that if the situation in the Congress were reversed (Republicans held a slight majority), they would be more effective at getting their message out that the minority is responsible for the gridlock. Do you agree and if so why? My sense is that Pelosi and Reid are not that charismatic.

Jonathan Weisman: When the Democrats controlled the Senate in 2002, Republicans throttled them as obstructionists -- of the president. They then knocked off the Senate Majority Leader, Tom Daschle, and swept back into control.

In 2006, the Republicans again charged obstructionism -- and they lost a surprising five seats.

It's a tough charge to make. It works sometimes. It doesn't work others. But even House Democrats are saying Harry Reid is not exacting a political price for all these filibusters.

_______________________

Tacoma, Wash.: McCain isn't campaigning in Iowa because he has long derided the ridiculous ethanol tax breaks (as and ex-Iowan, I heavily agree with him). As Huckabee/Giuliani/Romney spar heavily in Iowa, does that help him "slingshot" into New Hampshire and South Carolina?

Jonathan Weisman: That's his thinking, and it worked in 2000, at least in New Hampshire. McCain again is playing to his strengths -- independents in New Hampshire, military vets in South Carolina -- but it's much tougher this time around. The field is more crowded. In New Hampshire, it includes the governor of a neighboring state, Mitt Romney, as well as a well-known Northeasterner, Giuliani. In South Carolina, he's going against a social conservative from the South, Huckabee. It's just not gonna be easy.

_______________________

Germantown, Md.: With respect to the contempt citations, couldn't Congress use either "civil contempt" or its "inherent contempt" powers to bring Rove et al to heel? I know it still has the 60-vote problem...

Jonathan Weisman: They could, but it would be World War III. It's hard to reach back into a bag of tricks that hasn't been opened since the 19th century.

_______________________

Change the dynamic: Hillary's campaign is panicking rather than thinking. It seems to me they need to do something dramatic and unexpected. My free advice: open up everything. The press complains they're too controlling? Let the press in everywhere. Let them travel with her on the bus, hold constant McCain-style bull sessions in the back of a bus, put nothing off-limits. There may be an awkward moment or two, but at least the story changes from what her campaign is doing to what she's saying.

Jonathan Weisman: As a reporter I love your thinking, but as someone who watched Hillary Clinton in the Capitol, I know it will never happen. Her inaccessibility isn't the product of the advice from some handler, like Mark Penn -- it's her, and she isn't going to change.

_______________________

You misunderstand Princeton, N.J.: Dynamic scoring as a concept is not controversial -- it's just the scope of it that's argued over. What McCain and Giuliani (and most of the GOP in the House) say is that if you cut taxes you'll actually get more revenue than if you left the tax alone. This might have been true with corporate tax cuts from the 1980s but it's absurd to argue it's true today with individual or corporate tax rates. Yet that is what Giuliani in particular does.

Jonathan Weisman: I didn't misunderstand, and I agree with what you say.

_______________________

Montreal: Why aren't charities regulated? This stuff is basically just fraud.

Jonathan Weisman: When he was chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) really tried to clamp down on charities, but he was thwarted at every turn. They are seen as good guys, and that carries a lot of clout in the Capitol. It's hard to beat the Salvation Army.

_______________________

Responding to Woodridge, Va.: It's not like Obama admitted to using cocaine yesterday. He did it when he was a kid or very young. I don't think people care that much about "youthful indiscretions" even if they are illegal, as long as there is no element of hypocrisy involved.

Jonathan Weisman: But that doesn't mean you're not going to see an ad this fall, with a deep voice intoning "Barack Obama used cocaine," with a suspiciously darkened picture of the candidate gracing your screen, maybe with exaggerated features and long hair. As I have said before, who'd have thought we'd spend much of 2004 discussing John Kerry's war record?

_______________________

Filibuster: What is up with Reid letting the Republicans set the tone for the Senate? Why won't he make them filibuster and come out into the light in opposition to things the American people generally support? What is up with the anti-democratic 60-vote requirement?

Jonathan Weisman: A lot of House Democrats are with you. But the days of Mr. Smith going to the Senate floor are over. It takes 60 votes to cut off debate in the Senate, always has. It's just that these Republicans never want to give in.

In the old days, if you didn't cut off debate, someone actually had to be on the floor, conducting the debate or the debate ended anyway and a vote would come. Under Senate rules passed (I think) a decade ago, if you fail to cut off debate, the majority leader could just stay on the bill, but the Senate would just fall into what is called a quorum call. Nothing would be happening on the Senate floor. No debate. No drama. Nothing getting done.

That's why Reid doesn't want that to happen. If he doesn't get 60 votes, he just moves to the next bill.

_______________________

Manchester, N.H.: Do you think Bill Shaheen has wounded his wife's bid for the Senate in 2008? Will his statements about Obama and drug use come back to haunt the Shaheen Machine? Thanks.

washingtonpost.com: The Trail: Clinton N.H. Official Resigns After Comments on Obama (washingtonpost.com, Dec. 13)

Jonathan Weisman: I've been thinking about that too. Jeanne Shaheen has been way ahead of Sununu in the polls, and this cannot help. On the other hand, it will be ancient history next November.

_______________________

Anonymous: Why do you all look so swanky in your pictures for these chats? Did you all have them done special for these chats or are The Post's photographers just that good?

Jonathan Weisman: Okay, last question, because my time has run out! Ya call that swanky? Actually, when we get jobs at The Post, one of our wonderful professional photographers takes our picture in the studio on the first day of work. We can update it if we want, but we're all lazy (or busy) reporters. You can get an idea of how long we've been at The Post from the picture. Mine is five years old.

Goodbye everybody!

_______________________

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.