Excerpts
SUMMARY: Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week’s news, including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s response to concerns about her use of email, the letter sent by Republican senators to Iran’s leadership, and the fallout from a video capturing a racist chant at the University of Oklahoma.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Let’s talk about Hillary Clinton’s…Let’s talk about Hillary Clinton’s e-mails.
Mark, did she answer all the questions out there with her news conference this week?
MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated columnist: No, of course not, Judy.
The questions will keep coming and keep coming. But there was one result of it that just hit me so hard. And that is the great advice, beware of any national leader — and I don’t limit this to Secretary Clinton, by any means — but who doesn’t have close to him or her contemporary friends and confidants who can tell them when necessary they’re absolutely wrong and go to hell.
And very few Presidents — Jerry Ford did, to his everlasting credit. He was an enormously emotionally secure man. Ronald Reagan chose Jim Baker to be his chief of staff, who had run two campaigns against him, as examples of that sort of emotional security and stability.
I just ask Mrs. Clinton, who in your retinue, among your group of advisers, when you had the idea of having a personal computer e-mail service of your own, an individual one, who didn’t say, are you out of your “expletive deleted” mind? This is politically indefensible and probably morally indefensible and may be legally problematic.
And I guess that is what really bothers me. And I think that’s a question that persists even after all the details, whether the relevance or irrelevance of the e-mails turns out to be anything at all legally or substantively. That is a real problem.
JUDY WOODRUFF: What about the questions? Did she answer any of the questions?
MICHAEL GERSON, Washington Post: Well, I think the proper word for the press conference, it was really brazen. It was bold. She went out there. She had total control over her e-mails in a private server while she was serving in government.
She decided — she and her people decided what should be revealed and what should be eliminated.
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MARK SHIELDS: Well, I think this is a question that is going to nag at Democrats. Is this going to be — we’re seeing it right at the outset, that relations with the press are frosty, to the point of arctic, and that there is a sense, not simply from this, but that we’re going back into let’s go to the barricades. It’s let’s circle the wagons.
There’s a certain mentality that way. We’re not going to take anything. And I think in a nation that is as polarized politically as we are, as acrimonious as it has become, I think this is really not the atmosphere that you want to create. She is not the only person who has an e-mail problem, by any means. Every candidate on the Republican side has an e-mail.
And they have made unilateral — Governor Bush made unilateral decisions on what was personal. Governor Walker has persistent problems. But I’m just talking about the approach.
And Michael’s seat 22 years ago sat David Gergen, who went over to the White House having worked for President Reagan, Bush and Ford to work for President Clinton. Whitewater was then the big thing.
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JUDY WOODRUFF: Let’s talk about another — another story that was very much out there this week, the letter, Mark, 47 Republican senators sending a letter to the leadership in Iran saying, be careful, don’t sign a nuclear deal with the United States.
Was this — were they well-advised to sign this, to do this?
MARK SHIELDS: A respected national columnist with impeccable conservative credentials wrote of this letter, “In timing, tone and substance, it raises questions about Republicans’ capacity to govern.”
And just by accident, Michael happens to be here, the author of those words.
(LAUGHTER)
MARK SHIELDS: I think he said it very well.
This, Judy, was more than a faux pas or a slip-up. I think it is a reflection of Mitch McConnell in a really negative way, that his leadership is defective. The fact that he didn’t even consult with the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee of his own party, who opposed this and was trying to put together a bipartisan coalition of Democrats who had doubts and skepticism about the Iranian deal, that he just steamrolled it ahead and made it a matter of party loyalty and party unity, and essentially put us in a position where we’re at odds with our European allies, who are now doubting the United States and whether, in fact, we’re substantive, I mean, it just — whether we’re — we can be relied upon in this.
And to sabotage bipartisanship, it was done, effectively, in the Senate, and to sabotage the hopes of any kind of a deal to limit the nuclear building of the Iranians.
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On Iran nuclear deal
MARK SHIELDS: Judy, just one point. There are seven nations involved here. I mean, this isn’t just the — Barack Obama and the Republican Senate Caucus. This is France and Great Britain and Germany and China and Russia and the United States and Iran trying to come to a deal.
That is a remarkable achievement, if you can pull it off, with those seven countries all agreeing on inspections and a timetable. That’s important.
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