... President-elect Bush, but I expect that if he does what he says, and that is to sit
down as he goes along with the congressional leadership and talk about how he's going to
effectuate a kinder, gentler America, he will have enthusiastic support on that agenda,
kinder, gentler America.
We'll have our disagreements, we'll have our fights, but I believe there's plenty of room
for cooperation because there are plenty of problems.
Senator, do you also think that he's going to somehow address his problems with Bob Dole
because there is some friction between those two parts within the Republican Party?
Well, I quite frankly see potentially more difficulty on a personal basis between the
President-elect and the Republican leadership than I do between the President-elect and
the Democratic leadership.
And Bob Dole is a man of strong feelings and great strength, and I suspect, I guess if
I were going to recommend anything to the President-elect is sit down with Bob Dole
as well as the newly elected Democratic leadership when we do that in late November.
The fact that George Bush had very little coattails bringing in other Republican congressmen,
do you think that loses a bit of his effectiveness on the Hill?
Well, I think it's going to make it more difficult.
It's clear to me that there was no mandate in this election.
This was not a Ronald Reagan election.
This was not a case where Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 84 went to the country with a specific
agenda and said, this is what I want to do, and in fact got overwhelming support after
having said in strong terms what he wished to do.
But George Bush spent most of his time talking about Willie Horton and not about education.
He says he wants to be the education president.
I don't think you or I or anyone knows what he means by that.
So I don't think there was, I think there wasn't a, there weren't coattails in large
part because many of us in America did not know precisely what George Bush meant by what
he wanted to do by a kinder, gentler America, by how he was going to be the education president.
I think, so I don't see any direct correlation between those running for the House and the
Senate and the views that they spoke out on and George Bush at this point.
So it will be, it will take some time.
What negative campaigns do is they obscure the possibility of generating mandates and
mandates are positive.
Mandates aren't negative.
Mandate means there is a strong move for something particular to happen.
And that did not occur in this election and it's going to be, it's not impossible by
a long shot, but it's going to be imperative that George Bush, I believe in the first six
or eight months of his presidency, set out what he wishes to do with some degree of specificity.
And Senator, if you can quickly, to deal with the budget deficit, should he let Congress
bring it up first or should he set the agenda?
I think it's the responsibility of the president to set the agenda and I hope he will not dismiss
this commission, which quite frankly and put it very bluntly will give everyone the opportunity
to do the right thing without either side being fearful that the other side is going
to demagogue against it.
Well that fight's already started this morning.
Senator, thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you Kathleen, it's a pleasure to be here.
Nice to see you.
It's four minutes before the hour.
Not today.
Honeymoon.
It depends on his approach to the degree that he comes to define the kinder, gentler America
with real programs and reaches out and works with the Democratic Congress.
Yes, he will.
Okay, he's coming to you with a shopping list, obviously.
What's the Senate shopping list in return?
The Senate shopping list is very much the kind of agenda we've been setting for the
past few years.
A civil rights bill, a clean water bill, a highway bill, childcare, catastrophic health
insurance, responding to our competitive needs abroad, and dealing with the deficit above
all.
We wanted to deal with the deficit.
We tried to sit down with the administration and the flexible freeze is going to have to
be given definition.
If flexible freeze is merely more of the same, we've got a problem.
He's got a tough choice here.
Loss of spending, where is he going to do it, raise revenue, he says he isn't going
to do it.
How do you have a childcare program, environmental initiatives, and define yourself as the education
president without answering those questions?
We're ready to work with him and I guarantee you there's a Congress that's thirsty for
a partnership with the executive to deal with these things and a readiness to be bipartisan.
I think it's clear he has yet to define whatever this mandate or whatever it is that took place
last night.
Are you at all encouraged at his refusal to rule out what was called revenue enhancers
at that press conference?
I'm not sure yet what the appropriate approach is.
I'm certainly encouraged by his unwillingness to rule anything out.
That is important at this point in time.
A lot of this has got to be given a definition, Brian, which clearly last night in its electoral
sense didn't do.
It was much more a campaign against what they defined Michael Dukakis to be rather than
what they defined his vision to be.
But we are all obviously gratified when this country gets a new president.
It's an important moment and we're ready to try to work.
Senator John Kerry, again, I thank you for being with us and I apologize for the communications.
We're going to come back in just a moment, another hour to go, after the station.
She was kidnapped just four months ago and the search is still on.
Chance of winning some southern states and Rocky Mountain states.
I mean you just can't start off 180 electoral votes down and expect to win.
There's no margin for error.
So I think that lesson came through loud and clear last night.
One thing I will say, taking nothing away from Bush's victory was big, it was deserved,
but it's interesting to me that why he was winning so big, the House increased number
of Democrats, the Senate increased number of Democrats, and the governorship increased
number of Democrats.
So it's kind of a mixed result in the electorate, but still getting back to the point, the Democrats
are simply going to have to figure out a way to get competitive in the South.
Go ahead, Charlie.
Go ahead, Pat.
No, you go ahead.
Well, that's dead right in the South.
And the South is going to have more electoral votes in 1992 as a consequence of reapportionment.
But Charlie, if you take a look there, Benson is very strong in the South.
The fellow down there, McKay in Florida, ran even where George Bush won the state by 20
points.
Chuck Robb swept Virginia.
There are Democrats who can win the South and win big in Southern states, but the problem
is Bob's party hadn't figured out a way to get these guys on the top of their ticket.
Well, that's the question.
Was it a flawed, I mean, is it a situation where a Massachusetts governor simply couldn't
win?
You need somebody from the West or South?
Or was it a candidate, Bob Beckel, who could have won, but just blew it?
Well, Charlie, I think Dukakis ran a good race near the end, and obviously he didn't
run a good race after the convention.
But I think, is it possible for a liberal from the North to win?
Sure it is, and I wouldn't want to discount somebody like Cuomo, but the fact is, you
start off behind so deeply in the electoral college that it seems to me that we're the
only place we've had success as a party is when Jimmy Carter is Southern Iran.
So I think, though, the rules are going to have to change with the party, Charlie, if
that's going to happen, and that's going to require a major fight in the Democratic
Party.
Or candidates if they run from that section of the country who moderate their image.
I mean, if you give up 138 electoral votes off the top, or maybe even more in 1990 in
the South, 40 or 50 more in the mountain states, the Republicans start with two candidates
and two-thirds of the votes needed for election.
Yeah, that's right.
I mean, the math is so clear on this thing, and I think even the most diehard liberal,
and I consider myself one of them, has to understand the math here.
The math is that if you start off that far behind, the chance of winning are one and
ten at best.
But look, Charlie, let me add something, though.
George Bush took Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, California, Missouri.
Now when I came into politics about 25 years ago, we are talking about Democratic states.
Americans had a tremendously difficult time winning.
The Catholic vote in America is moving out of the Democratic Party.
Nixon got only 20 percent of it in 1960s, why Jack Kennedy beat him in those states.
Bush now got almost 45 percent.
Reagan went over that.
It is the Catholics in the North, as well as those white Protestants in the South, who
are leaving that party in social conservatism, is the reason, I think.
I think a lot of these fellows support the programs out of Congress, Social Security,
and all the rest.
It's social conservative that's killing you, I think.
With 2020 hindsight, Bob Beckles, should he have taken John Glenn as his Vice Presidential
choice and the Texas strategy was doomed from the beginning?
Well Charlie, I think he had to try to win Texas.
The answer is probably no.
If he had gotten Glenn, the question is could he have won Ohio?
Ohio was a big win for Bush.
But I think Pat made a couple of points through the industrial states that he lost.
Glenn may have been slightly more helpful there than Benson, but I really don't think so.
I think he made the right choice.
He had to try to go for Texas.
You can't win.
Democrats have never won the White House without the state of Texas.
Pat, you had a very interesting news conference in Houston.
Right away George Bush sounds like he's ready to manage.
Names James Baker as his Secretary of State, and then says, and I wonder how the conservatives
react, no I'm not particularly interested in the constitutional amendment on abortion
and the line item veto on the bound budget amendment, etc.
No wide open constitutional convention.
There's a lot of conservatives that are opposed to that idea.
There are very few like me that are interested in that idea as a matter of fact.
But let me, Charlie, that was a very crisp press conference.
Donald Reagan's great fort is that televised address looking right into that camera.
He's not the greatest man at a press conference we've ever seen.
But Bush was really crisp and sharp.
I think he's going to use that more.
The choice of Baker, conservatives had real problems with Schultz, is expected.
I don't think there's going to be any problem with that with the conservatives.
Interestingly enough, he named Craig Fuller Chief of the Transition, and Sheila Tate Press
Secretary to the Transition, but neither of them to White House jobs, although he did
name the White House Counsel and the White House Director of Personnel.
He put Bob Teter, too, in the Transition team.
Exactly.
It sounds as if...
Taking polls for the Transition.
Exactly.
I don't know what he does besides polls.
But he sounds like the President, Bob Echol, the President slash Manager.
Yeah, it does.
I was sitting with Pat.
We were watching that.
We were both commenting on the facts.
It's been a long time since you heard a President give a good crisp news conference.
And I've got to give Bush credit.
It seems like he wants to take charge.
He used words like, I want to have a whole new team, which I think is going to send a
lot of shivers up the spine of some of these cabinet members in the Reagan administration
who thought their jobs were secure with Bush coming in.
But I think with Bush, really, the thing I took out of that, being a Democrat, Charlie,
was I think he made the right overtures to the Congress.
He's going to have to do that.
This is not a guy that's going to be able to go out over the heads of the American people
or the Congress and appeal to the American people.
He'll do it by consensus.
And he started that, I think, today.
But he sent one signal, too.
He is that, look, we're open to working with the Congress, but the agenda is no new taxes
and there aren't going to be new taxes, which suggests to me that that's one of the first
battlegrounds of the coming.
We'll see about that.
We'll see about that.
And that will be a fitting topic on which we can resume when we discuss later on the
Bush administration as it moves forward.
Bob Bechel, thank you very much.
Pat Buchanan, always a pleasure.
Thank you.
Thank you, guys, for being here.
It's 23 minutes after the hour.
We'll be back.
Tip O'Neill and half a day.
...bring the primaries but could not escape during this campaign.
Finally, this was not a campaign based on issues.
Voters said the economy was their number one concern, but except in the South, they split
their votes almost equally between Dukakis and Bush, which is not much of a mandate for
action on the economy by the new president.
Lynn Sher, ABC News, New York.
And a last word this morning.
You should watch for some big changes at the White House.
For instance, President Reagan's beloved jelly beans are right on the way out.
George Bush is going to be bringing in his pork rinds and popcorn.
In true Texas style, President-elect Bush hates vegetables and he loves country music.
And those horse rides are out.
Fitching horse shoes is in.
White House reporters are warned to stay out of the line of fire.
And that's the latest news.
Let's pitch it over to Spencer for a look at weather.
Spencer.
Okay, Bob.
Democratic control.
Earlier this morning, I talked with two veterans of the long-running war between the White
House and Congress.
Tip O'Neill, the Democratic Speaker of the House during the first years of the Reagan
administration.
And I talked with him in Boston.
In Miami, Howard Baker, former White House Chief of Staff.
And before that, the Republican leader in the Senate.
I asked Senator Baker what he thought it would be like for President Bush to be dealing with
the Democratic Congress.
I think it's going to be pretty good.
I think George Bush is uniquely suited to the task.
That is, he knows a lot of people on the Hill.
He understands the House and Senate.
He served in the House.
He presided over the Senate.
And by nature, I think George understands the necessity to negotiate.
So I expect that he'll be a consensus president.
I expect he'll have extensive personal contact with the leadership on both sides of the House
and Senate.
We don't know who the leadership is going to be, really, on the Senate side yet.
They've got a hot contest on the Democratic side.
But I expect one of the first things that George Bush will do, and probably before January
20th, is try to establish a personal rapport, a personal relationship with congressional
leadership, the bipartisan leadership.
That's his nature.
And I think that would be the most important first step that he could take under these
circumstances.
Mr. Speaker, will it work?
Do you think the Democrats will be in a conciliatory mood with him?
Well, the interesting thing is that Jim Wright, who is the Speaker, likes to talk about Sam
Rabin, who is his idol.
I remember when I was first elected, Eisenhower was elected as president.
We went to the caucus.
And Sam Rabin says, any jackass can kick over the bond and take the cop under the build
one.
We're doers and builders, and we're going to work for the betterment of America.
And actually, during the Eisenhower administration, Sam Rabin worked better with the president
than did his own leadership within his own party.
Jim is a little upset about the sleaze factor because he brought him in.
With a little time, the Democrats are America's first.
And he's going to have his problems for a while, but everything will turn out for the
best.
But problem number one is going to be the deficit.
And George Bush has been very emphatic during this campaign on the tax issue.
That is something you wrestled with again and again, Senator Baker, with the Republican
president, how to deal with that.
Is he going to be able to deal with it?
I think he will, Charlie.
I really think the biggest untold story in this country on the domestic scene is the
fact that the budget deficit has been going steadily down for the last several years.
Three years ago, I guess, it was $220 billion.
And then this year, it's $155 billion.
And under Graham Rudman, it's scheduled to be about $108 billion, if I remember correctly,
in the following year.
So it's a pretty good downward glide slope.
And indeed, I think, if you send it down at a much steeper rate than that, it might have
an unfortunate effect on the economy.
So I think George has a good...
President-elect Bush has a good point of departure.
I think we're headed in the right direction.
I think he can maintain that improvement in the deficit situation without raising taxes.
I think he can do that.
Mr. Speaker, that deficit is coming down basically because money is coming in...