ROUNDTABLE: POLITICIAN'S PAST

(This is an unedited, uncorrected transcript.)

COKIE ROBERTS George W. Bush and cocaine, is this something that's
going to go away? Bill Kristol, George Stephanopoulos, Time
has a poll out coming out tomorrow, Time magazine, says 84
percent of the people say that Bush should not be disqualified if in
fact he did use cocaine in his 20s. Is that it?

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, ABCNEWS ANALYST I think so. I mean, who knows for
sure. But this is August, and it does feel like this was some
summer thunderstorm. It looked all dark and threatening over the
horizon, came in with a fury and then it goes away. And in a way, Bush
may be in a stronger position today than he was a week ago. Didn't
handle it very well, but he's been through his first crisis, hopefully
learned from it.

COKIE ROBERTS In the way that Clinton, after the Gennifer Flowers
thing, people say, well he's tough ...

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS He's getting a little tougher, but it's true, it
does tend to immunize you against future attacks if you learn from
them.

COKIE ROBERTS And?

BILL KRISTOL, ABCNEWS ANALYST I guess I'm just not in touch with the
American people here. I would kind of prefer to have a president about
whom we could say that he never used cocaine. I don't think it's a
disqualification by itself, but I think it is a legitimate issue. And
I think conservatives and Republicans are now at great risk of looking
like total hypocrites. They didn't say in 1992, and George remembers
this well, that, oh what Bill Clinton did in his early 20s, didn't
matter. That letter to the draft board, he was 22 years old, whether
he smoked dope over in England, certainly, people didn't say that
about Dan Quayle in the National Guard controversy. Suddenly, George
Bush is their guy. It looks like he can take back the White House.
Ralph Reed, Jerry Falwell--oh hey, what you did in your 20s, 25 years
ago, it doesn't matter. Now, I don't think it should be a
disqualification. I think we don't want to get, you know, excessively
involved in looking into people's private lives, but cocaine is a
serious thing. Governor Keating--just one last point. Governor
Keating, who is a good man, a serious guy, worked on the Reagan--Bush
administration, did some law enforcement work on the drug issue,
former FBI agent, said on our show because he's defending Governor
Bush, underage drinking, you know, everyone does it. Are we now saying
that cocaine ...

COKIE ROBERTS Trigonometry ...

BILL KRISTOL Is cocaine use like underage drinking. I am unwilling to
go there. Maybe most Republicans and conservatives are, but I am not
willing to say that cocaine use is like underage drinking.

COKIE ROBERTS Where do you come out on this?

GEORGE WILL It's better to look hypocritical than to cling to a bad
position and be wrong. And it seems to me, George Bush has stumbled,
staggered and lurched to a sensible position, which is something like
a 25 year statute of limitations on your behavior. Even if it's
behavior that would, today, under laws you support, make you eligible
for prison. What Mr Bush also has not appreciated is the extent to
which the American people don't want to make moral judgments. They
want to leave people alone. There's a book published by a Boston
University professor a year ago, called, One Nation After All,
Allen Wolf (ph), a Boston University sociologist. He said the 11th
commandment in America is thou shalt not judge. The American people
don't want to do this anymore.

COKIE ROBERTS Well, it's interesting, in fact, in the same Time
poll, we have--a question was asked, should the media even ask these
questions and here's the answer evenly split, basically should, should
not. And this is a question about, as you say, Bill, drug use on the
part of a possible president. Now you see it's down from June when 60
percent say they should, because now the questions been asked and
people are uncomfortable.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS Yes, but you know what, George is right about
this tolerance and about people don't want to have the question asked.
But they're more than willing to judge first time offenders who, you
know, who aren't privileged. They're more--you asked Governor Keating
and Vice President Quayle about this, and this should open up a debate.

GEORGE WILL The (inaudible) raging, I mean, it's been going on for two
years now. John (inaudible), lots of very impressive people who would
be considered social conservatives are now rethinking that.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS It has not yet reached the Congress or
...

GEORGE WILL The Congress is the last to learn.

COKIE ROBERTS And the Congress will not act. At this point, the
Congress would not dream of taking away mandatory sentences at this
point. Obviously what disturbed me this past week more, was not even
the fundamental issue, but it was the handling of it. It did seem
Clintonesque to me, you know, just moving the margin and answering
this question, but not the bigger question and all that. That's what I
think we're sick to death of.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS No question about that. And it made me wonder as
we were watching this go on through the whole week, how much George
Bush's staff knows about what the truth is. You know, it seemed like
he was answering these questions--been there, right?

COKIE ROBERTS Yes. I'm familiar with that.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS It seems like he was answering these questions
on the fly, deciding it at the last second. A lot of his people around
him were in the dark. But, again, the parallels to 1992 are not
perfect. Both in the case of both the draft and Gennifer Flowers.
These stories only took off in 1992 when a person came forward and
made a charge, whether it was Gennifer Flowers or Colonel Gene Holmes
(ph) with the draft. The reason the Bush position is OK--it will be OK
as long as no one comes forward and say he's lying, or he did this.

COKIE ROBERTS Came forward with tapes in one case and a letter in
another case.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS Precisely.

COKIE ROBERTS I mean, came forward with evidence.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS Other than that, it's a pretty good bet that
Bush can hold on to this position.

COKIE ROBERTS Now, it did seem to be the effect this week of drowning
out the other Republicans though. I mean, Elizabeth Dole at this point
last week looked like she was getting some steam, getting some
momentum, and then we didn't hear another word. Is that--has it in
some ways helped George W. Bush?

GEORGE WILL Oh, I don't think so. If it's helped him, it's helped him
because his staff is going to learn how to do this better, because
they haven't handled this very well. But the week after Ames is the
week after Ames, and it's a long time to go in this. But the
other--the Republican race, if I could digress a moment, is about to
take a turn, I think. John McCain, in an interview published in the
San Francisco Chronicle on Friday, says the following-"I'd
love to see a point where [Roe v. Wade] is irrelevant, and could be
repealed because abortion is no longer necessary. But certainly in the
short term or even the long term, I would not support repeal of Roe
vs. Wade."

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS Bravo.

GEORGE WILL Now, people are going to ask ...

COKIE ROBERTS This is 180--degree turn.

GEORGE WILL Well, people are going to ask him, A) at what point and in
what sense are abortions necessary? But also, here's his 1998
Congressional candidate questionnaire from the National Right to Life
Committee. "Do you support complete reversal of Roe v. Wade?" Yes.--John
McCain.
Now, obviously, what he's doing is he's going
to make this Armageddon is California. And he plans to go out there
and turn that into a referendum on choice and the Republican Party.
And if he wins that, you'll get your third party candidacy. Because
Buchanan will.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS Not just California. New Hampshire primary, I
know he's on the Democratic side. It's open to independents. You can
draw new people into the process. He's betting that the other
conservatives will be divided.

COKIE ROBERTS Right. And he's doing very well in New Hampshire right
now.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS Absolutely.

COKIE ROBERTS He's running second in New Hampshire and that's where
he's placing a lot of his hopes; however, the other place he's placing
a lot of hopes is South Carolina. And I can't imagine that this
statement is going to play well there.

BILL KRISTOL I don't know. I think the Bush/McCain things are, in a
way, related, which is the Republican establishment does not want to
take on moral issues. They have decided that the lesson of Clinton is,
as George said, that it's not that the country suffers from Clinton
fatigue, we're suffering from morality fatigue. And we say we're
pro--life but we're not going to be serious about being pro--life,
because if you were serious about being pro--life--if you were serious
about being pro--life you would need to appoint judges who would
reverse Roe v. Wade. And if you were serious about saying kids
shouldn't use cocaine, you have to take seriously the fact of a
candidate refusing to say he didn't use cocaine until age 27. I do
think these are related. I don't think they're going to get away with
it. And they may--look, McCain or Bush, probably one of them is likely
to be the nominee. But there will be a fight in the Republican Party
over the next six months over the notion that, hey, no moral judgments.

GEORGE WILL There's a subtext here also, because Republicans are
saying the real reason this election matters is the Supreme Court.
Now, you can be--- millions of Americans are pro--choice, but
understand that Roe v. Wade was appalling constitutional law. What
McCain is saying is that Roe v. Wade was satisfactory constitutional
law, that tells you you can't count on him even to appoint good judges.

COKIE ROBERTS The point that you have both made, that this can drive
away conservatives in the Republican Party and have the third party
candidacy, we also see that happening in the Democratic Party. Warren
Beatty, the actor in California, has a piece in today's New York
Times where he is saying, "Why Not Now?" It's not clear what he
means, by not now. I guess campaign finance reform not now?

GEORGE WILL What is clear in that piece he wrote? Seriously.
(Laughter)

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS He's coming from the movies and this is a
trailer. This is preview, coming attraction, maybe a Warren Beatty
candidacy. I mean, who knows whether he's going to run again. But, you
know, in the piece he's right about one big thing. We need public
financing of Congressional campaigns. I know, George, I can see it in
his eyes. (Laughter)

GEORGE WILL An entitlement to the political class, just what America
needs.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS The privileged are protected. We do not get
serious health care reform because of campaign finance--they way
campaign finance .

GEORGE WILL What? Could that have had something to do with the health
care proposal?

COKIE ROBERTS Oh, come on, George ...

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS It's also because the health care industry
spends hundreds of millions of dollars to protect their interest.

COKIE ROBERTS Look, for 20 years, the Democratic Party ran on the left
and with leftists as their nominees, and they lost. And it wasn't until ...

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS Well that's different from the
issue.

GEORGE WILL Wait, wait. Also, on the health care, the great--what were
those ads, the couple they're talking, the health care industry
attacking the health care plan? Harry and Louise. That wouldn't be
stopped, or would it, by public financing? Are you also going to
regulate issue advocacy? That's what it--campaign finance always
metastasizes--it has to--into controls of issue advocacy by
independent groups, a frontal assault on the First Amendment.

COKIE ROBERTS Well, we also had this week the year's anniversary of
the President's confession, and the announcement that Kenneth Starr is
talking about resigning from his post after he writes a report that is
likely to be somewhat critical of Mrs Clinton.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS Or is it after he writes the reports? That was
one of the controversies, that maybe he would leave before the work of
the independent counsel is done. And one of the judges dissented,
because he said, is it really right that this continues to go on
without any good justification for it.

COKIE ROBERTS Well, what is the--I mean, isn't it time for this to be
over?

BILL KRISTOL Yes, and he should not quit, I think. I mean, he, it's
his job, it's his responsibility. We're supposed to be in favor of
individual responsibility. He should finish his job, write his report
and leave. But look, it is a year later. It's a year after Bill
Clinton's pseudo--confession. And I do--I think Bill Clinton has won
in some respects.

COKIE ROBERTS Oh, yes.

BILL KRISTOL He has succeeded in defining the standard of American
public life down. We can sit here and say, well, Bush looks
Clintonian. But I think George Stephanopoulos is right. Bush looks
right now that he's going to get away with the past week, and I think
it has been a Clintonian performance. In fact, over the whole last
month, Bush has been surprisingly Clintonian. He never quite admits a
mistake. When he gets interviewed in Talk magazine to Tucker
Carlson, he doesn't like some of the things Tucker reports. He doesn't
really say Tucker made them up, but somehow Tucker misread. And he
doesn't apologize for them, which would have been easy. He could have
said, look, I said something foolish. I was being flip, I shouldn't
have said it, but it never quite says, I made a mistake, I shouldn't
have said it.

COKIE ROBERTS It would be very refreshing, it would be very refreshing
to have that kind of discourse in the campaign.

GEORGE WILL And that's what amazes me about these people whose job it
is to be in touch with the country's pulse beat. In America, you can
do absolutely anything if you say you're sorry, anything. If Nixon had
said he was sorry, he would have finished his presidency. They said,
I'm sorry I did this. people, say good ...

BILL KRISTOL Clinton taught the opposite lesson, which is, you should
never really quite admit--you've got to have ... (Crosstalk)

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS ... first elected American president in history
to be impeached. How can you say he won it? How can you say he changed
everything? He has survived. The country is doing fine. The stock
market has gone up, but it is wrong to some how say that he's gotten
away with something.

GEORGE WILL You can't say that ...

COKIE ROBERTS I think it's a long--term problem for the Democratic
Party2E

GEORGE WILL That's right. You can't say that Clinton's gotten away
with it, until you see how Gore pays the penalty for it.

BILL KRISTOL But we all want to see if Gore pays the penalty for it,
if the Republicans actually stand in opposition to everything Clinton
stands for. And I do think the past week's called that into question.
I don't want to be too tough on Bush on just this one question, but I
do think--look why are the Republicans 15 points ahead of Gore?
Because, presumably, they are not Clinton. You're not going to have
Clintonian behavior from the Republican president. That's the selling
point. And I do think that's why this past week is an important one.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS They're also going to have to have an issue
offensive, maybe over the next several months George Bush will come
out and say, here's what I'm going to do as president. That's what got
Bill Clinton elected in 1992. He had a program, he had an agenda ...

COKIE ROBERTS I mean that will happen.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS We'll see.

COKIE ROBERTS How can it not happen? You can't go for a year and a
half without talking about issues at some point in the game. And we
will see what they are next week or the week after.