"Did Al Gore Cry?"; "Use DeLay's Extremism" As a "Foil"; Gumbel: Ignore GOP Extreme and Follow McCain's Lead

1) CNN's Bernard Shaw to Gore aide Roy Neel: "In the final hours...how many times did Al Gore cry?"

2) Face the Nation hosts pounded away at Dick Cheney, pressing the winner to embrace Democratic policies. Gloria Borger suggested they and Democrats "write legislation together" while Schieffer dreamed: "Will there be a place where you will say to Democrats ....'You've had a better idea on this than we do'?" Schieffer urged Bush to "resist and isolate" conservatives.

3) Bush should "use DeLay's extremism and general awfulness and low popularity as a foil," argued Newsweek's Evan Thomas. Nina Totenberg of NPR and ABC: "The Republican Party is only going to really survive and prosper if it doesn't stiff the moderate wing of its party."

4) Dan Rather: "Stress cracks are forming within Republican Party ranks over the Bush's plans for a big across-the-board tax cut."

5) Gumbel to McCain: "Would you advice...George Bush, as he looks to the Senate, to look to the centrist coalition rather than to the conservative agenda of the extremes of his own party?" CNN's Schneider: "I'd argue that what Americans voted for with this closely divided result was, in a way, John McCain's approach."

6) Letterman's "Top Ten Items on George W. Bush's To-Do List."

     >>> CyberAlert Countdown Calendar to the 1,000th CyberAlert. Today's is the 991st, so 9 to go. It all started with 22 subscribers in April 1996 with 122 CyberAlerts distributed that year. It jumped to 199 issues in 1997, rose to 207 in 1998 and dipped to 193 editions in 1999. Those years totaled 721 CyberAlerts followed by 270 as of today this year as primaries, conventions, debates and the Florida recounts fueled content. <<<

 1

What we'll miss when CNN's Bernard Shaw retires in a few weeks. Shaw to Gore Chief-of-Staff Roy Neel in a taped interview clip played during CNN's 9pm ET/PT special Sunday night on Time's "Person of the Year," George W. Bush:
"In the final hours, because you knew him so well, so close to him, how many times did Al Gore cry?"

    Neel gave the politically correct answer: "Oh I'm sure he cried, how could you not..."

2

Matching liberal conventional wisdom, the Face the Nation hosts on Sunday pounded away at Dick Cheney, pressing the winning ticket to embrace the policies of Democrats and abandon any pretense of actually following through on any conservative campaign promises.

    Bob Schieffer referred to "this enormous tax cut that George Bush proposed during the campaign" and insisted Cheney react to how "Tom Daschle said this morning, 'I can't think of anything that would divide this nation more than you pushing that tax cut at that size.'"

    Gloria Borger suggested the Bush administration and Democrats "write legislation together" while Schieffer dreamed: "Will there be a place where you will say to Democrats....'You've had a better idea on this than we do, and we might take your position on this.'?"

    Schieffer wrapped up the show by urging Bush to abandon conservatives: "By Wednesday night, he was clearly back in the middle, but already the 'my way or no way' crowd is trying to force him back to the right. If he is able to resist and isolate them, he will find a middle ground occupied by friends, allies and -- if I may say so -- most of the American people."

    Here are all of the questions posed to Cheney by Schieffer and Borger on the December 17 CBS show:

    -- Bob Schieffer: "It occurs to me that you are about to become what all Vice Presidents try to be, want to be, but never are. And that is a real force in the administration with a real job. It seems to me that -- from what I've seen so far, that you're going to be the chief operating officer of this administration with George W. Bush as sort of a chairman of the board. Is that a fair way to put it?"

    -- Schieffer: "Well, let me ask you, I mean, you obviously are going to have to spend a lot of time up on Capitol Hill with this 50-50 Senate because you'll need to be there to break the tie on votes. But will you continue to play an active role in this administration as you have throughout the transition?"

    -- Gloria Borger, in the only non-liberal question: "Mr. Vice President-elect, conservatives are watching you very closely. They're looking for signals that this administration is not going to desert them on issues like tax cuts, partial-birth abortion, anti-abortion rights. What would you say to conservatives right now about that?"

    -- Cheney replied: "It's why we got elected. So we're going to aggressively pursue tax changes, tax reform, tax cuts, because it's important to do so, partly for economic reasons, partly because we have this growing surplus and some of it ought to be returned."
    Schieffer retorted: "But let me just tell you about something that the Democratic leader in the Senate, Tom Daschle, said this morning. You're talking about going forward with this. I assume what you're saying here is you're going forward with this enormous tax cut that George Bush proposed during the campaign. Tom Daschle said this morning, 'I can't think of anything that would divide this nation more than you pushing that tax cut at that size.'"

    -- Schieffer: "Well, okay, let me just make sure I understand what you're saying here. You're saying you're still going to push the tax cut that George Bush pushed during the campaign because there have been other people who have said maybe it'd be a little easier to take that step by step."

    -- Borger: "Mr. Cheney, with all due respect, the Democrats are saying that this administration cannot proceed as the Reagan administration did, for example, with a large tax bill because you don't have the mandate that a Ronald Reagan had. And it's not going to be good enough, they say, to cherry pick one or two Democrats here and there and get them to sign on to whatever tax bill you have. What they are asking for, in a lot of areas -- not only taxes but, say, campaign finance, education -- is to sit down with Republicans in advance and actually write legislation together. Would you be willing to do that?"

    -- "Let me talk to you about just a couple of specifics. For example, many of the conservatives in your party are saying that the person who heads up Health and Human Services, that Cabinet position, must be a pro-choice person. Will there be that, that pro-life person. Will there be a litmus test on that?"
    Cheney: "There are no litmus tests, but President-elect Bush and I are both committed to the pro-life position. We've always made that very clear. We've emphasized during the campaign we want to work to build coalitions, reach across the divide on this issue to try to find areas where we can get something done to reduce the total incidents of abortion. And we'll pick good people in these Cabinet posts, but we don't have don't have a litmus test."
    Schieffer: "But it sounds to me that you're saying that it's likely that you likely will put a person who is pro-life in HHS."

    -- Borger: "Let me ask you about campaign finance reform. It is something that John McCain has talked about. He says that he's got 60 votes for it right now in the Senate. If that bill passes, that McCain-Feingold bill, would George W. Bush veto it?"

    -- Schieffer: "Let's talk about some of that conventional wisdom. You mentioned the conventional wisdom is that George Bush is going to put some Democrats in the Cabinet. How many and is that likely?"

    -- Schieffer: "The Washington Post, in a piece this morning, posed an interesting question. They said that somewhere along the way, will there be a place where you will say to Democrats -- in an effort to bring people together to work together -- where you will say to them, 'You've had a better idea on this than we do, and we might take your position on this.' Can you think of any issue that might arise like that?"

    -- Borger: "John Breaux has said he's willing to work with you in the administration as somebody in the Senate, but he won't join the Cabinet. There seemed to be a lot of bitterness on the part of a lot of Democrats. Are you having a difficult time getting Democrats to serve in the Cabinet that you've asked or to serve in top levels in this administration?"
    Cheney: "No."
    Borger: "Not at all?"
    Cheney: "No."
    Borger: "So there-"
    Schieffer: "There'll be one or two, I think you said?"
    Cheney: "I would expect that there will be, clearly be a Democrat, I think, within the Cabinet."
    Borger: "Just one?"

    Schieffer's end of the show commentary portrayed the primaries through a liberal prism and urged Bush to "resist and isolate" conservatives:
    "After George W. Bush spoke to the country Wednesday night, I remarked on television that it was the kind of speech that those of us who have followed his career remembered him making before the campaign. I always thought Bush was a better candidate than his campaign allowed him to be and he got off to a terrible start. An inexperienced staff -- terrified he would commit some kind of gaffe -- walled him off from the press and to some extent from the public as John McCain was rolling through New Hampshire playing the press like a banjo. And why not?
    "When McCain rolled right over Bush, the Bush campaign reeled down and right. Suddenly, there was Bush at Bob Jones University in South Carolina, emphasizing themes he had hardly given lip service as Governor. Yes, Bush won South Carolina in a dirty fight, but the mud bath probably cost him Michigan the next week -- and may have cost him Michigan and some other key states such as Pennsylvania in the general election.
    "Independents were alienated by the right turn into South Carolina and Bush spent the rest of the year trying to steer back to the middle.
    "By Wednesday night, he was clearly back in the middle, but already the 'my way or no way' crowd is trying to force him back to the right. If he is able to resist and isolate them, he will find a middle ground occupied by friends, allies and -- if I may say so -- most of the American people. It won't be easy, but only from there and with them can he hope to get anything done."

3

Advice from journalists for George W. Bush, conveyed for free by Inside Washington: He should "use DeLay's extremism and general awfulness and low popularity as a foil" since "the Republican Party is only going to really survive and prosper if it doesn't stiff the moderate wing of its party" and so it should embrace Whitman and Ridge.

    On the syndicated Inside Washington show over the weekend, carried by many PBS stations and WUSA-TV in Washington, DC, Newsweek Assistant Managing Editor Evan Thomas advised Bush from the left: "You know what he ought to do is a Sistah Souljah. He ought to use DeLay's extremism and general awfulness and low popularity as a foil to show what a man of the center he is and stiff DeLay. Why not?"

    Nina Totenberg of NPR agreed the key to Bush's success is embracing "moderate" Republicans: "I think his hardest problem really is that the Republican Party is only going to really survive and prosper if it doesn't stiff the moderate wing of its party and if Tom Ridge and Christie Todd Whitman are being vetoed, which they are already by certain segments of the Republican Party from positions in this administration, it doesn't bode well for the future."

    Thomas soon repeated his point: "There are two ways to deal with the right here. One is he can let himself get dragged down by them and essentially have what little chance he has of success fail because he kowtowed to the right, or he can use the right as a foil, push off against them, go to the center and get something done."

    Kowtowing to the right defines failure to the media.

    Speaking of the "awfulness" of Tom DeLay, you can now view the December 14 CBS Evening News wanted poster-like graphic which announced "BEWARE" above a picture of Tom DeLay with this below:
"TOM DeLAY
REPUBLICAN
HOUSE WHIP
'THE HAMMER'"

    MRC Webmaster Andy Szul has posted a picture of it:
http://archive.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2000/cyb20001215_wknd.asp#2

    Check it out and you can decide if it looks more like a wanted poster or an old style campaign poster.

4

The media will play up any and all strategic differences expressed by Republicans. A good example: How the networks have all jumped on Dennis Hastert backing off of Bush's "enormous" tax cut as evidence of eroding support for it.

    Friday night on the CBS Evening News, Dan Rather announced: "Stress cracks are forming within Republican Party ranks over the Bush's plans for a big across-the-board tax cut. CBS's Phil Jones has been looking into what this may bode for the new President and the Republican agenda in Congress."

    Jones picked up on how "the Republican Speaker said he wasn't ready to give his blessing to any huge Bush tax cut."
    Hastert: "And, you know, I wouldn't count on an across-the-board tax cut first, but I think we ought to look at these things incrementally and get one piece done at a time. I think that's when we have the most success here."
    Jones: "The President-elect's response?"
    Bush: "I have made it clear to the Speaker once before that, you know, I campaigned on a package that I thought was fair and fiscally sound and responsible, and I will continue, I strongly believe that."
    Jones: "But House Democrats like the idea of dealing with tax matters piecemeal, with one caveat."
    Dick Gephardt: "What you can't do is get to a huge number that would blow the deficit and the budget by simply saying you're doing them one at a time."

    Jones: "Conservatives, remembering how they rammed through the Contract with America, are mounting another $5 million to $10 million public relations blitz to make sure Republican leaders in Congress don't cave in to Democrats."
    Scott Reed: 'The real question is, why are the Republicans in Congress negotiating away the Bush agenda before George W. Bush has even given his inaugural address? That's what needs to be addressed."

    Jones concluded: "Right now, congressional Republicans and Democrats appear to be getting along. But the big question is, can the Republicans keep the peace in their own family?"

5

CBS's Bryant Gumbel and CNN's Bill Schneider exhorted Bush to ignore conservatives and adopt the non-partisan and "centrist" McCain model of governing.

    Friday morning on CBS's The Early Show, MRC analyst Brian Boyd noticed, Bryant Gumbel pushed McCain to denounce conservatives:

    -- "Why have you decided to join this centrist coalition?"
    -- "Is your move a rejection of the conservative agenda of Trent Lott and the Republican leadership?"
    -- "If there's a move to the center does that mean that Lott and his agenda is pretty much out of step with what's happening?"
    -- "Do you view that as part of the agenda of the centrist coalition or what are the priorities as you see them?"
    -- "Your primary issue for a long time has been campaign finance reform, it's an issue that has not been embraced by Republicans. Do you have a better shot at getting it done with your new centrist friends?"
    -- "Let's talk about power sharing in this new evenly divided Senate. You've said that you would endorse equal representation on the Commerce Committee, which you chair. Does that mean you would accept a co-Chairmanship with a Democrat?"
    -- "Would you advice an incoming President George Bush, as he looks to the Senate, to look to the centrist coalition rather than to the conservative agenda of the extremes of his own party?"

    Last Wednesday, December 13, on CNN's Inside Politics, Bill Schneider first proclaimed as fact: "For the first time ever, the United States Supreme Court decided who would be President by a narrow, highly partisan majority."

    Then Schneider proceeded to warn in the analysis caught by MRC analyst Brad Wilmouth: "Bush has to decide how he intends to govern. Conservatives were amazingly patient during this campaign. But now Republicans will control the White House and both houses in Congress for first time into nearly fifty years. There will be pressure on Bush to press a conservative agenda. But that's not the way Bush ran."
    Bush: "I have worked with Democrats and Republicans in Texas. And I will do so in Washington. I will listen. And I will respect different points of view."
    Schneider: "Other presidents have taken office after intensely divisive conflicts. After the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln began his second inaugural address by saying 'with malice toward none, with charity for all,' a view not shared by his party. After the tumultuous events of 1968, Richard Nixon promised to bring us together. After Watergate, Gerald Ford told the nation, 'Our long national nightmare is over.' The division in this election was over the election itself. That makes it tough for Bush, because the issue is his own legitimacy. Americans did not vote for a partisan mandate in this election. That's why the results were so excruciatingly close for President, for Congress, and even in the states, where we're seeing the closest balance in state legislatures since 1952. No evidence there of a partisan mandate."

    Judy Woodruff asked him: "Bill, are people voting for a new breed of nonpartisan somehow?"
    Schneider pointed viewers toward McCain as the model Bush should follow: "Well, I think they very well might be. You know, ask yourself: Which of all the candidates really captured the popular imagination in this entire year-long campaign? It wasn't Bush. It wasn't Gore. I would say it was John McCain, a man perceived as the least partisan figure in American politics. And I'd argue that what Americans voted for with this closely divided result was, in a way, John McCain's approach, even though his name wasn't on the ballot. I think Bush should take that as a cue for the kind of administration voters want."

    If McCain was so popular why didn't he win?

6

From the December 15 Late Show with David Letterman, the "Top Ten Items on George W. Bush's To-Do List." Copyright 2000 by Worldwide Pants, Inc.

10. Get fitted for an intern
9. Put favorite holiday decoration on front lawn: Santa in electric chair
8. Goodbye "Hail to the Chief" -- Hello "Messed Up In Mexico Living on Refried Dreams"
7. Tell Madeleine Albright, "Bill don't live here anymore -- stop the 2am calls"
6. Send Al Gore an FTD "Guess The Supreme Court Likes Me Better, Loser" bouquet
5. Figure out how to make eating squirrel acceptable -- them boys is tasty!
4. Do a little bipartisan work with Hillary, if you know what I mean
3. Tell Al Gore to keep his schedule clear in case things don't work out
2. Call Saddam Hussein, listen to the panic when he hears we got another "President Bush"
1. Thank Katherine Harris by sending her metric ton of mascara

    Even when the target is Bush comedians can't avoid some last digs at the Clinton era. -- Brent Baker

     >>> Support the MRC, an educational foundation dependent upon contributions which make CyberAlert possible, by providing a tax-deductible donation. Use the secure donations page set up for CyberAlert readers and subscribers:
http://www.mrc.org/donate

     >>>To subscribe to CyberAlert, send a blank e-mail to: mrccyberalert-subscribe
@topica.com. Or, you can go to: http://www.mrc.org/newsletters. Either way you will receive a confirmation message titled: "RESPONSE REQUIRED: Confirm your subscription to mrccyberalert@topica.com." After you reply, either by going to the listed Web page link or by simply hitting reply, you will receive a message confirming that you have been added to the MRC CyberAlert list. If you confirm by using the Web page link you will be given a chance to "register" with Topica. You DO NOT have to do this; at that point you are already subscribed to CyberAlert.
     To unsubscribe, send a blank e-mail to: cybercomment@mrc.org.
     Send problems and comments to: cybercomment@mrc.org.

     >>>You can learn what has been posted each day on the MRC's Web site by subscribing to the "MRC Web Site News" distributed every weekday afternoon. To subscribe, send a blank e-mail to: cybercomment@mrc.org. Or, go to: http://www.mrc.org/newsletters.<<<