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CNN&Time

Person of the Year; The Job Ahead; Breaking Ranks

Aired December 17, 2000 - 9:00 p.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

ANNOUNCER: Tonight, "Time"'s "Person of the Year." It could have been one or the other or both, at least until the Supreme Court left only one.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JIM KELLY, "TIME" MAGAZINE DEPUTY MANAGING EDITOR: I would be less than honest if I didn't say there were a couple of times when I thought we might end up putting both men on the cover. And we even prepared for the possibility that in fact the vice president would prevail.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: To our president-elect goes the spoils, but also the burden of victory.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES: I think this provides the president and the administration and members of Congress the opportunity to show the country that our federal government can function and it can rise above partisanship.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: And what of the runner up? Where now for Al Gore?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAREN TUMULTY, "TIME" CORRESPONDENT: He might want to run again because it's what he's always wanted. It's something he attempted at the age of 39. It's something that was practically genetically encoded in him.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: From what might have been to what might be. George W. Bush, "Time" magazine's "Person of the Year."

"The Job Ahead": Presidencies past and present. What do they suggest about things to come?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) RICHARD REEVES, HISTORIAN: When there were big issues like are the Russians coming, it was easier to be president, and it was easier to be a politician. Now they're fighting over crumbs. And they act like it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RICHARD BROOKHEISER, HISTORIAN: Some of our worst presidents have been our great intellectuals. I would argue that Woodrow Wilson and James Madison were two of the worst presidents we ever had. And they were clearly two of the most intelligent.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: The Bush White House in the big picture.

"Breaking Ranks": A concession, a president-elect. It's all over, right? Not so fast.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JUDITH BESS, POLITICAL SCIENTIST: The Supreme Court has not ruled on whether or not a state can compel an elector to vote for the candidate he won in his state. The issue is not simply a matter of law, it's a matter of trust.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: Presidential electors and political mavericks. Could history repeat itself?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHUCK CLAY, GEORGIA GOP CHAIRMAN: The stakes are too high. The fight has been too tough.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LLOYD BAILEY, DOCTOR: The "New York Times" had an editorial calling me the "Defector Elector."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: CNN & TIME with Jeff Greenfield and Bernard Shaw.

BERNARD SHAW, CO-HOST: Good evening.

When it comes to our annual presentation of "Time" magazine's "Person of the Year," we usually try a little suspense off the top, add some mystery to the announcement if we can. But this year, that won't work because in the end this year's nominee seemed almost a foregone conclusion. JEFF GREENFIELD, CO-HOST: A month or so ago, "Time's" choice would have been anybody's guess from Elian Gonzalez to a first lady who would be senator. Or how about a key figure from the Firestone debacle, or maybe a high-tech baron from a prominent dot.com that bombed?

All those stories, however, pale in comparison to the events of the last several weeks to one of the closest presidential elections in history, to the counts, recounts, court battles, and eventual concession that gave us finally our president-elect.

For all that he and the nation have been through and all that he and this country still face, the editors of "Time" magazine choose George Walker Bush as "Time's" "Person of the Year."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Chin down a little bit. That's good. Come right in toward me with a nice -- that's good. That's good. That looks presidential. Right here. That looks nice.

WALTER ISAACSON, "TIME" MANAGING EDITOR: This year was pretty nerve-wracking because we went up to the last moment. But that also made it very exciting because we got to be very newsy.

Once the election came and then the election contest and the controversy over it, we made a pretty clear decision which was that whichever man won would probably almost surely be Person of the Year.

KELLY: I'd be less than honest if I didn't say there were a couple of times when I thought we might end up putting both men on the cover. And we even prepared for the possibility that in fact the vice president would prevail.

But by Tuesday night of the week we were closing, we realized, yes, we have a cover subject.

ISAACSON: George Bush would have been a strong contender for Person of the Year even if we hadn't had this election contest, if he had just won it cleanly because he helped remake the Republican Party. He fought off any third party challenge. He defeated a sitting vice president who had the wind at his back because of a great economy and peace.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Wow, that's really good.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That (INAUDIBLE).

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's a really nice picture.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yeah, it really is.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well, the other advantage we have is the interview with him, which was really...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Him and I did, yeah. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: ... that you and Jim did, yeah, that was really sort of asked him to sit down and think about what he would do as president.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's January 20, 2001. You've just taken the oath of office. You've come to the White House. What is the first thing you plan on doing?

BUSH: Well, it is to remind the White House staff why we're there. And that is to serve the country, to remind people that -- not only the White House staff, but the cabinet as well -- that this is a unique moment, and we've got to seize it.

And there is a reason why it's taken a while for this election to close besides just the count. I think this provides the president and the administration and members of Congress the opportunity to show the country that our federal government can function, can rise above partisanship.

ISAACSON: He's somebody who, unlike Al Gore, is not immersed in the details and unlike Al Gore doesn't have a great intellectual curiosity. But he is somebody who tries to see a big picture, who has a very good instinct about people but doesn't immerse himself in the intellectual nuances of policy.

BUSH: I don't think I'd be sitting here as the president-elect had I not been aggressive on issues. What you're hearing is a man who's going to go into the Congress with a strong belief that the reason I will be able to deliver an inaugural address is because of the positions that I took, the stance that I made, the case I made.

ANDREW CARD, BUSH CHIEF OF STAFF DESIGNATE: He certainly has changed America's political scene. He was a different kind of candidate running for president. He was a different kind of Republican candidate running for president. And it started very early in his candidacy.

JOHN DICKERSON, "TIME" CORRESPONDENT: The first many months for George Bush were a bit of a cakewalk. The entire Republican establishment, as if they've gotten in a room, had said, "He is the man."

They had traveled all down to Austin, the money men, the thinkers, the representatives of all the different constituencies. They had come to touch his garment, to listen to him, and to say, "He's our guy."

BUSH: I'm running for president of the United States. There is no turning back. And I intend to be the next president of the United States.

DICKERSON: So by the time the beginning of the year 2000 comes along, George Bush looks inevitable, looks invincible. He's got everybody lined up in a party that's been chilling in itself for the last two electoral cycles.

All of the battles between the various different interest groups within the GOP had to be put aside. They wanted the White House back.

Bush in fact was the perfect candidate because he was outside of Washington. But, of course, his name dripped with Washington.

PRISCILLA PAINTON, "TIME" ASSISTANT MANAGING EDITOR: There was this remarkable Republican machine of fundraising that had been prepared and put into high gear. So by the time he rolls out into Iowa, he's amassed so much money, he's broken every record in the history books.

DICKERSON: He had hoped to scare off all contenders. And yet here he had John McCain chugging along and upending his campaign in New Hampshire.

BUSH: New Hampshire has long been known as a bump in the road for front runners. And this year is no exception.

KAREN HUGHES, COUNSELOR TO THE PRESIDENT DESIGNATE: I recall being in New Hampshire and feeling like things weren't right. But I talked myself out of it.

And so I allowed myself to become convinced that we were in great shape, and we were going to win New Hampshire. And sure enough, we didn't win. We not only didn't, we really didn't.

DICKERSON: New Hampshire changed the expectations. Suddenly a couple of days after, McCain was up by four points in South Carolina. Bush could pretend he was the underdog. It was where he was more comfortable.

PAINTON: And we can find out that he can play really rough if he has to. And that's exactly what happened in South Carolina.

BUSH: I'm not going to allow myself to get defined. I'm not going to allow my integrity to be attacked. I'm going to stand up for what I think is right.

HUGHES: We fought back in South Carolina. We won only to go to Michigan and three days later knocked on our heels again. And that night, I remember thinking, is there something we're missing?

PAINTON: The McCain group was a lot more powerful and resilient than anybody thought it was. And what the party did was basically mobilize for their anointed candidate George Bush. And they were able to sort of extinguish McCain.

BUSH: He waged a really good campaign. And he put me through my paces.

DICKERSON: There is at the center of Bush's character this interesting line between confidence and arrogance. Throughout this campaign, he has had Washington experts claiming that they don't know what they're doing down in Austin.

The criticism was constant and relentless in some periods. And Bush almost always stuck to his guns, said, "This is the way I'm going to do it."

PAINTON: He didn't go to the Christian Coalition Convention. He spoke to them by satellite. And he managed to stay away from some of these divisive issues that always trip up the Republican nominee.

I think a crucial moment was when he criticized the House Republicans for balancing the budget on the backs of the poor. It was a way of saying, "I'm a different kind of Republican."

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Ready.

BUSH: I am ready.

CARD: He had support among the Republican base of over 90 percent by the time we started our convention. So the bounce that Governor Bush got out of the convention -- and it was significant -- came by bringing independents and Democrats into the philosophy that the governor talked about.

BUSH: Delegates and my fellow citizens, I proudly accept your nomination.

KELLY: Then comes Al Gore, who not only has a successful convention. But that campaign bounce that Al Gore enjoyed lasted, of course, about 10 weeks. And it's only supposed to last one or two weeks.

There were times in September -- people tend to forget this -- there were times in September when the governor of Texas was written off. Everyone assumed, not only was Gore leading in the polls, but George W. Bush was not having a very good time on the campaign trail when Al Gore was. And he survived all that.

DICKERSON: Bush is not at pains to show you how much he knows or how in control or command he is. He's been constantly underestimated throughout his career. He was underestimated in the debates. He wasn't going to do very well. Al Gore was going to wipe the stage with him.

BUSH: Look, this is a man, he's got great numbers. He talks about numbers. I'm beginning to think not only did he invent the Internet, but he invented the calculator.

DICKERSON: After three debates, George Bush had been the winner in all three by most accounts.

PAINTON: I think the main dynamic during that period was the voters truly taking from these events information for the first time and processing it. And that's why you saw the polls move back and forth so often because there really was a genuine digestion going on in the America electorate.

BUSH: I don't believe that some of these states that they've called, like Florida, I just don't believe that we've got enough evidence to be able to call the state.

HUGHES: Election night was just an amazing night. I remember we didn't really know what to think.

BUSH: But it is going to be a long night.

HUGHES: President Bush was there. Mrs. Bush was there.

GEORGE BUSH, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We want to see him win it here.

HUGHES: Everybody was very tired. There were moments of exhilaration where networks called that he had won and Vice President Gore called to concede.

SHAW: George Bush, governor of Texas, will become the forty- third president of the United States.

CANDY CROWLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Put me on. Gore has retracted his concession.

HUGHES: And then there were moments of almost disbelief when they changed their minds and when Vice President Gore called back to say it was actually too close. So it was just an amazing night.

PAINTON: Those who said the contest would be close had no idea how close it was going to be. And then you had the beginning of a 35- , 36-day ordeal that revealed as much about these two men as perhaps a whole year of campaigning had before.

DICKERSON: In the post-election period, the Bush campaign was doing this delicate balance. They had to have their candidate out enough to show that he was engaged, but not so much that it looked like he was sprinting for the White House gates.

He spent a lot of time at his ranch in Crawford, sort of hidden from the daily spin and the sniping and the fights so that they hoped when he actually did take the office he wouldn't have been smudged by the five-week wrestle in the mud.

BUSH: Morning, everybody.

CARD: George Bush never lost a sense of what we're all about. He maintained his faith throughout. He has a great stability in his life where this is not the do-all and end-all to all that exists. And he was confident that he would win. But if he didn't win, he was going to be able to do very, very well.

He campaign consistent to what the rules required. And he won the presidency fair and square. He will be president of all of the people.

BUSH: The spirit of cooperation I have seen in this hall is what is needed in Washington, DC. It is the challenge of our moment.

It is an opportunity for both Republicans and Democrats to show the country that we can come together, that the closeness of the election and the so-called divided House provides an opportunity for people who care more about their country than they do their political party to come together and show Americans that government doesn't have to be divided.

It is a unique moment. And I intend to seize it.

KELLY: We asked him what he had learned from the past year. And he said a couple of interesting things. He said for starters he's become much more patient, much more tolerant, because he felt very strongly that the campaign itself is not only a terrific learning experience, a terrific way that someone tests themselves in ways that would be useful once that person reaches the Oval Office, but that it was almost a kind of a forging process where certain characteristics got hardened and toughened in the process.

And that I found quite interesting because most presidential candidates two weeks after the election when there's still no winner, you would expect them to be somewhat bitter about the process, how long it takes to elect the president of the United States.

BUSH: He's a good man.

KELLY: He felt the opposite. He was perfectly fine with the ups and downs of the previous 14, 16, 18 months.

BUSH: Let's go change Washington, DC. What do you say?

KELLY: He gave us an opportunity in picking somebody who for better or worse encapsulated this year.

BUSH: Thank you so very much for coming. God bless you all.

KELLY: The dreams and also the disappointments that were all part of this year's political process.

DICKERSON: When he comes to Washington, he will have the feeling that one of the reasons he got through this race was that when everybody was screaming that he should go the other way that he stuck to his guns. It remains to be seen whether that will be a good or a bad quality in Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GREENFIELD: When we come back, Al Gore, his moment in history, and what may lie ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANNOUNCER: Next, from a president-elect to what might have been, Al Gore's next move.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROY NEAL, GORE CHIEF OF STAFF: I think Al has got a lot of options. I mean, he's awfully young, first of all. And he's got this unbounded energy. So he can do just about anything he wants.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: Also ahead, George W. Bush and his predecessors, some interesting parallels.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Clinton was fearless at one on one, shaking hands, working a room. I never thought Clinton on television or giving a formal speech was particularly effective.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BUSH: Our mutual security need no longer depend on a nuclear balance of terror.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was the same kind of a split with Bush.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: As CNN & TIME continues.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SHAW: Four years, a lifetime in politics, especially the presidential kind. And no one knows that better right now than Al Gore.

Although some Democratic leaders suggest the vice president would be an early front runner for their party's next presidential nomination, there most certainly will be Democrats to challenge him. So what's next for Al Gore?

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SHAW (voice-over): Up until the final hour when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against him...

AL GORE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Good to see you all today.

SHAW: ... Al Gore believed he still might be president.

TUMULTY: He gathered his lawyers together. He had a series of conference calls. They went over the opinion even as they were peeling it off the fax machine. And finally, he told everyone to go to bed, that before he decided what he wanted to do, before he decided whether there was anything left for him, he wanted to sleep on it.

That was around midnight. Around 2:00 in the morning, two of his top strategists, both of them got separate phone calls from the vice president who it turns out wasn't sleeping on it at all. And he said, "I know what I need to do."

UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE (singing): God bless America.

SHAW: It was an emotional time not only for Gore, but also those around him throughout his career like Roy Neal (ph), the boyhood friend from Tennessee, who had become Gore's chief of staff and was already helping him pick a cabinet.

(on camera): In the final hours because you know him so well, so close to him, how many times did Al Gore cry?

NEAL: Oh, I'm sure he cried. How could you not? I mean, he's a man of deep emotions, very intense feelings. And this was so much pressure for not only five weeks, but for two years.

I'm sure the tears came. That's healthy and constructive.

Lord knows I did. I cried the morning after the election. It was just an exhausting feeling.

TUMULTY: Al Gore himself had spent his entire adult life almost hungering almost nakedly for this job. So it's got to be tough for him to fall just short of it, and not only just short of it, but to a man who by all accounts had never given the job a thought before a few years ago.

SHAW (voice-over): The next night, Gore went before the nation to concede.

NEAL: It started out like a wake, like a funeral. It was very sad.

GORE: I've seen America in this campaign. And I like what I see. It's worth fighting for. And that's a fight I'll never stop.

NEAL: That's the Al Gore I knew during that speech, the Al Gore I've always known from the time we came to Washington when he was a 28-year-old freshman congressman. That's the Al Gore I came to Washington with. And that's the Al Gore I think that people are going to see more of whether he runs for political office again or not.

GORE: Partisan feeling must yield to patriotism.

NEAL: When he spoke, during his speech and afterwards, he could feel people's spirits being lifted up. And that atmosphere changed dramatically when Al and Tipper and the family got back to the residence from the White House. And they turned a funeral into a fantastic party.

TUMULTY: One of the guests was rocker Jon Bon Jovi. He gets on his cell phone. And the next thing you know, sometime around midnight, Tom Petty shows up. About 45 minutes later, Stevie Wonder shows up and plays a couple of numbers.

And Tipper Gore at one point joined them on the drums. And everyone stays and dances and laughs and drinks and reminisces. They danced until 2:30 in the morning. The vice president was able to hang around with a beer in his hand and relax and know that he had done everything he was able to do.

NEAL: Once you get past the what-ifs and if it had only happened this way or that way, it's an enormous sense of relief that it's all over.

SHAW (on camera): What does Al Gore do next?

NEAL: I think Al has got a lot of options. I mean, he's awfully young, first of all. And he's got this unbounded energy. So he can do just about anything he wants.

TUMULTY: It's funny, Tipper Gore has often joked in the past that she and Al may come to regret the fact that he never finished law school.

SHAW (voice-over): For 24 years, Al Gore's only job has been elected official. Now he has to find a way to make a living.

TUMULTY: Here is a guy who's never even invested in the stock market. He basically missed the entire stock market boom. So I don't think making money though is going to be among his top priorities.

He may find a refuge in academia. He may find a refuge in some sort of think tank or public policy institute. But he's also going to be using this time to think about whether he wants to take on the White House again.

GORE: As for what I'll do next, I don't know the answer to that one yet. Like many of you, I'm looking forward to spending the holidays with family and old friends. I know I'll spend time in Tennessee and mend some fences, literally and figuratively.

SHAW: When Gore lost Tennessee, he lost the White House.

NEAL: That's the real tough thing to deal with in this campaign. We win Tennessee, there's not a Florida issue at all.

SHAW (on camera): Very frankly, why didn't he work the state more? Why didn't he go home more?

NEAL: Well, first of all, he was the vice president of the entire country. And during his campaign, he had to focus on those very large electoral states.

I wouldn't second-guess it. But it was a tough judgment call. And in the end, they probably should have been there more.

SHAW: 2004, how does he stay viable so that he can if he decides run again?

NEAL: Well, I think frankly the way he held himself during the recount process was the best thing he possibly could have done. He rallied the base. He showed that he was in fact a fighter. This wasn't rhetoric. And he fought hard for something he believed in, for people he believed in. That was the best thing he could do coming out of that election. He won't be presumptuous I think in assuming that if he were going to run, the nomination would be his. He'll have to fight for it if he runs in 2004.

TUMULTY: In a lot of ways, Al Gore realizes that this decision is not entirely his to make. At one point during the last five weeks as they were fighting his legal battle, his top strategist Carter Eskew (ph) and his brother-in-law Frank Hunter (ph) started speculating in front of him about what this meant for his prospects in 2004.

And he told them to quit talking like that. He said, "Until we have a midterm election, we're not going to know where anything stands. So it's pointless to be talking about this now."

GORE: It's time for me to go. Thank you and good night. And God bless America.

SHAW (voice-over): For now, the list Roy Neal was lining up for a Gore cabinet has been filed away, but not entirely forgotten.

NEAL: You know, once I got past the pain of that ending, I began to think you know, we may pull that box out of the attic again in the future.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SHAW: Coming up, the presidency of George W. Bush, a look at the job ahead.

ANNOUNCER: Next, the lighter side of reading the presidential tea leaves.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GREENFIELD: Wouldn't you rather have a president who thought of life in sunny terms rather than dark terms?

REEVES: Absolutely. Absolutely. I'm a closet Reagan fan. Reagan knew only four things, but he knew them real good.

BUSH: I'm George W....

REEVES: I would be perfectly happy to find out that George Bush knew three things.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: When CNN & TIME continues.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GREENFIELD: For the better part of two years, we were asking one question about the next president: Who will it be? For the five weeks after Election Day, we were asking, when will we know? Now we ask a different question: How will President-elect George W. Bush do?

To answer that question, we decided to take a broader view, with two journalists who both earned reputations as eminent historians.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(voice-over): Richard Reeves has been a political journalist for nearly 40 years. More recently, he has won wide acclaim for his history of John F. Kennedy's presidency. He's just completed a book on the presidency of Richard Nixon.

Richard Brookheiser (ph) is a senior editor at "National Review." He's written biographies of George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, and he's just finished a book on the Adams family.

One of the Adams, John Quincy, was the only son of a president to win the White House until George W. Bush. And like Bush, he actually lost the popular vote to Andrew Jackson, a fact that haunted the younger Adams.

RICHARD BROOKHEISER, HISTORIAN: He felt ashamed. He felt ashamed of it, and so was paralyzed by it. He couldn't fire disloyal people in his administration. And he was just, like, unconsciously waiting for Jackson to hit him and punish him for what he'd done.

GREENFIELD (on camera): So in this case, agonized reflection on how he got to be president is not something George W. Bush ought to be doing too much.

BROOKHEISER: It's not a recipe for success.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN F. KENNEDY, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The election may have been a close one, but I think there is general agreement...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GREENFIELD (voice-over): In 1960, John Kennedy barely won the popular vote, and many Republicans believed he'd won the electoral vote only by some creative vote counting in Illinois and Texas. Kennedy's response, says Richard Reeves, was to reach across party lines.

REEVES: Well, he didn't feel he had a mandate. And in terms of appointments, he appointed a Republican as secretary of the Treasury, a Republican as secretary of Defense, a Republican as national security adviser. He thought he had to do that -- and her probably was right about that.

Having said that, there was a consensus in the country about what the problems of the country were, and they were the Russians.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, NEWSREEL FOOTAGE)

ANNOUNCER: At one point he reminded the Soviet leader that the United States has gone to war twice to protect Western Europe.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

REEVES: He was able to govern in foreign policy relatively easy because there was a national consensus.

GREENFIELD: Without that consensus, Reeves says, the terrain for Bush will be rougher.

REEVES: I think it's going to be much tougher for the next president than it ever was for John Kennedy. It's like faculty politics. The smaller the issue the bigger the politics.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, NEWSREEL FOOTAGE)

ANNOUNCER: May Day celebration in Moscow's Red Square.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

REEVES: When there were big issues like, are the Russians coming, then it was easier to be the president and it was easier to be a politician. Now they're fighting over crumbs, and they act like it.

BUSH: Works every time, doesn't it.

GREENFIELD: But Richard Brookheiser notes that President-elect Bush does have one tool at his disposal that JFK used very effectively: this medium.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KENNEDY: Well, I cut my finger while I was cutting bread.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROOKHEISER: Well, the 24-hour news exposes you more and it exposes you to vulnerable situations, potentially vulnerable situations more.

BUSH: I don't think we need to be subliminable about the differences between our views on prescription drugs.

BROOKHEISER: But what it also does is give you a chance to appear more. It gives you as chance to present yourself more. That's something that these guys in the 19th century who won these sweeper, difficult elections, they didn't have. I think Americans have always have had a wealth of respect for the presidency -- and that's George Washington's legacy -- but the modern media and television has made that potentially a much stronger thing if the president knows how to draw on it.

GREENFIELD: In this sense, says Brookheiser, the next president is a lot like his predecessor.

BROOKHEISER: Clinton was peerless at one-on-one, shaking hands and working a room. I never thought Clinton on television or giving a formal speech was particularly effective.

BUSH: Our mutual security need no longer depend on a nuclear balance of terror.

BROOKHEISER: There's the same kind of split with Bush. He can be very stiff in giving a formal, stand-up address. But when he works a room -- and even if you're not at the side, even if you're at a distance watching his progress through the room -- it's evident that he's great at this.

GREENFIELD: But there's another, less-reassuring way Bush might find himself like Clinton, and that is in dealing with his own party leaders in the Congress.

BUSH: Trent brought up the fact that John Breaux was a forward- thinking senator who was willing to bring Republicans and Democrats together.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. Speaker, the president of the United States.

REEVES: When Bill Clinton, the best politician of his generation, became president, the Democratic congressional leadership from the left, Foley and Mitchell, rolled all over him. He was a new guy in town. They said, this is the way we do it. you've got to do it. Clinton couldn't stand up to them. And I don't think George Bush is going to be able to stand up to the Tom DeLays and the Trent Lotts and the people on his side. They have an agenda. And as far as anyone can tell, George W. Bush doesn't.

BUSH: I will also swear to uphold the honor and the integrity of the office to which I have been elected, so help me God.

GREENFIELD: But while no political fan of Bush's, Reeves does find the new president's ingrained optimism a reason for cautious hope.

REEVES: We've crossed the parallel. In this election, Gore was Nixon. Bush is John Kennedy, the likable lightweight. George Bush doesn't think bad things happen to him. Richard Nixon knew bad things happened to him.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RICHARD NIXON, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Just think how much you're going to be missing. You don't have Nixon to kick around anymore.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GREENFIELD (on camera): Wouldn't you rather have a president who thought of life in sunny terms instead of darker terms?

REEVES: Absolutely, absolutely. I'm a closet Reagan fan. And I hope that -- I mean, Reagan knew only four things, but he knew them real good. I would perfectly happy to find out that George Bush knew three things.

GREENFIELD (voice-over): For Brookheiser, this sense of small expectations may actually prove to be of a big help to the new president.

BROOKHEISER: Yes, the lowered bar is something that he has profited from. Everybody was saying before the presidential debates that Al Gore would clean the floor with him. And, you know, it may not be a flattering expectation to have when people think, oh, you know, he's stupid and he's an illegitimate president, but hey. if it';s going to work for you, you know, use it, play to that.

GREENFIELD (on camera): Well he have always said that one of his great assets is that he's underestimated. He's said that.

BROOKHEISER: Some of our worst presidents have been our great intellectuals. I mean, I would argue that Woodrow Wilson and James Madison were two of the worst president we ever had, and they were clearly two of the most intelligent.

GREENFIELD: How does he make the sale not now as a candidate but as president-elect and president. What has to happen now?

BROOKHEISER: What Bush has to figure out is, what is the problem they still have with me.

I think they think he's not yet mature enough. He's still his father's son, he still seems untried. We haven't seen him in enough situations. And that's something that can only be fixed by the situations.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GREENFIELD: When it comes to judging presidents, even hindsight is no certain guidepost. Historians still argue, have we underestimated presidents like Chester Arthur and Rutherford B. Hayes? Have we inflated the reputations of James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. When historian David McCullough said you can't know how effective a president will be, he might have added, you can't even know how effective they were.

ANNOUNCER: Coming up, electors as wild cards.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Would you yield just a minute? I couldn't help reading the statement.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I wasn't pledged to a soul. The Constitution gives an elector the right to vote for the person who he thinks would be best to run this country.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: When those who are chosen change their minds.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I knew that the act of breaking with tradition would be used by the opponents of the Electoral College.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: As CNN & TIME continues.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID ENRICH, COLLEGE STUDENT: I understand that you're committed to support George W. Bush...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: Next:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ENRICH: ... But before doing so, you should weigh America's national interest.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: Playing the political odds.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We think that there are a lot of independent- minded people that, electors, that are out there. There are 271 of them. We need to convince two or more of them. That's less than 1 percent.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: When CNN & TIME continues.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SHAW: Now that one man is the winner, it should be smooth sailing from here on out. Members of the Electoral College will meet on Monday, cast their votes, and presumably George W. Bush will capture a majority. After all, presidential electors invariably vote for the candidate they have pledged to support. But certainly this election has not been conventional.

Could animosity over the outcome of election 2000 lead one or more electors to break ranks? It rarely happens, but a few political mavericks have played the role of the faithless elector.

Art Harris explains.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CLAY: They're going to be thrilled to have the opportunity to cast their vote. I am.

ART HARRIS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Attorney Chuck Clay (ph) is taking no chances. Clay heads up Georgia's Republican Party and its slate of 13 presidential electors. He's counting on them to vote the way the state went: for George W. Bush.

CLAY: Obviously we've had discussions, the Bush team has had discussions, the RNC.

HARRIS: They've been talking about how to make sure Republican electors across the country vote for Governor Bush when the Electoral College gathers on Monday. George W. Bush should officially become president-elect by a margin of four electoral votes. He's got 271, Vice President Gore 267.

But in an election that's had so many unexpected twists, some are speculating about another one -- Republican electors possible breaking ranks.

MARIO CUOMO (D), FORMER NEW YORK GOVERNOR: There's no guarantee that three or four electors who were previously supposed to vote for Bush wouldn't turn around out of anger and confusion, perhaps, and say, we're going to go with Al Gore.

JOHN SUNUNU, FORMER WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF: The electors on the Republican side are not -- not even leaning one iota toward this fairy tale solution.

HARRIS: The Constitution doesn't say anything about how an elector has to vote. So Republicans are taking extraordinary steps to make sure that all 271 of their electors stay committed.

CLAY: Dick Cheney and I had a conference with the electors a couple nights ago.

HARRIS: It was a conference call designed to rally the faithful and make sure Republican electors vote the right way on Monday.

Chuck Clay plans to round up the Georgia electors for breakfast and then bus them to the state Capitol.

CLAY: In terms of Georgia, my worst nightmare is that we have a snowstorm, a blizzard, somebody has a medical emergency, the bus on the way to the Capitol veers off the road.

HARRIS: Even worse than an accident, his fear is a political catastrophe in another Republican state.

CLAY: Obviously somebody voting the other way. I guess that's the worst thing that could possibly happen.

HARRIS: But Clay says he has no hint of any defectors, and he's had no pressure to switch -- except for one letter.

CLAY: A Christmas card from a lady upstate New York, a very nice card with a very nice note. It was not shrill or mean or anything else, appealing to my, I guess, other side -- she would like to think better side, I would think my insane side if I were even to consider it.

HARRIS: But several Republican electors around the country tell CNN they're getting e-mails, letters, phone calls urging them to jump ship and vote for Al Gore.

David Enrich (ph), a California college student, came up with the idea of flooding electors with hundreds of e-mails. He says he's a political independent who just wants to see the Electoral College abolished.

ENRICH: We think that the Electoral College is just unfair in anti-democratic. And it really disturbs us to see this institution that was and created in a very different time, a couple of hundred years ago, and about to subvert the will of the people.

HARRIS: Go to an Enrich Web site, and there's a list of all Republican electors, their names and addresses, even a sample letter that some people have been sending to electors.

ENRICH: I understand that you are committed to support George W. Bush, but before doing so, you should weigh America's national interest.

HARRIS: Lloyd Bailey is proof that presidential electors do switch sides. He's one of nine electors in American history who've broke ranks.

BAILEY: "The New York Times" had an electoral calling me the defector elector.

HARRIS: Bailey is now 72 years old. An eye doctor in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, he never expected to make history when his local Republican first met in the summer of 1968.

BAILEY: It was all very informal and you'd be the elector, and they were pointing at me -- the candidate elector. Well it didn't really mean anything because at that time, none of us expected the Republican Party to have a chance to win North Carolina.

HARRIS: But Richard Nixon won North Carolina, thanks largely to the third party candidacy of George Wallace.

As Nixon began picking members of his new administration, Lloyd Bailey, a member of the ultra-conservative, John Birch society, began to have doubts about Nixon's choices and his own conflict about what to do.

BALEY: I realized, I couldn't vote for Richard Nixon because I didn't think it was in the best interest of the future of the United States.

HARRIS: So when fellow Republican electors met and voted for Nixon, Lloyd Bailey picked George Wallace. Overnight, he became a party outcast. BAILEY: Most of the electors just didn't want to have anything to do with me.

HARRIS (on camera): How did you view yourself?

BAILEY: I thought I was doing my duty to my country?

HARRIS (voice-over): When it came time for Congress to count electoral votes, some members tried to throw Bailey's vote out. The House and Senate even called special sessions to look at the so-called defector elector.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BAILEY: Governor Wallace won 46 percent -- 46.1 percent of the vote in our district. And this certainly made it easier for me to do what I did because I was representing my district when I voted.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAILEY: I wasn't pledged to a soul. The Constitution gives an elector the right to vote for a person who he thinks to be best to run this country.

HARRIS: That's correct, says Edward Dewinsky (ph), then a Republican Congressman from Illinois. But he insists Bailey betrayed North Carolina and his party and tried to get his vote thrown out.

The former congressman says tradition calls for all electors to follow voters' wishes. That's the way it's been since the 1830s -- at least most of the time.

EDWARD DEWINSKY (ph), REPUBLICAN: The voters intended in his particular case, and it was North Carolina, to vote for Richard Nixon. And that was his then responsibility to carry out their wishes as a Republican elector. He wasn't put there to out think his -- the majority of voters.

HARRIS: Congress let Bailey's vote count. But North Carolina passed a new law designed to make sure future electors would be tied to the way the party went. Anyone who dared to switch sides could be fined, their vote thrown out.

Twenty-five states now have laws to bind electors. Some even threaten fines.

But political scientists Judith Bess (ph) doubts whether those laws could pass a Constitutional challenge.

BESS: The Supreme Court has not ruled on whether or not a state can compel an elector to vote for the candidate who won in his state. The issue is not simply the matter of law. It's a matter of trust.

HARRIS: Georgia has no such law, but Chuck Clay says his electors are party loyalists, committed now more than ever to Bush. CLAY: The stakes are too high, the fight's been too tough. it's obviously a time to move on and heal. The final step of that is casting your vote.

HARRIS: Even before his concession, Vice President Gore made it clear he didn't want any Republican defectors.

GORE: I will not accept the support of any elector pledged to Governor Bush.

HARRIS: But that hasn't stopped David Enrich from continuing his fight against George W. Bush.

ENRICH: We need to convince two of his 271 electors to switch their vote. So we don't need to be very successful in this, we need to be very slightly successful. And that will send the election to the House of Representatives.

CLAY: Yes, I think that's about as likely as a comet slamming into Earth and hitting us all tomorrow. You know, you can always hypothetically assume a scenario where that might happen. This is not keeping me up at night.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SHAW: Will any presidential electors break ranks this time around? Follow the twists and turns Monday, as CNN brings you live, nationwide coverage of the Electoral College vote.

That's this edition of CNN & TIME. I'm Bernard Shaw.

GREENFIELD: And I'm Jeff Greenfield. Thanks for joining us.

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