Bill: Thank you very much, folks.
You're a wonderful crowd.
We love coming here to --
Woman: We love you, Bill!
Bill: I love you right back.
[ Cheers ]
They really --
they give us red-carpet treatment here in
Washington.
Yesterday, we got here.
There was a reception at the airport.
There were fruit baskets for the staff.
And today, they took us over to the Vice President's office and
let us play with the defibrillators.
[ Laughter ]
[ Cheers and applause ]
Well, last night, I'm sure you heard, President Clinton, former
President Clinton, made his debut as a citizen speaker.
He did quite well.
His spokesman said he is getting over 100 requests a week for
paid appearances.
So far, he has turned pretty much everything down.
Although he is mulling over an appearance in "The Vagina
Monologues."
[ Laughter ]
[ Cheers and applause ]
Speaking of which, did you see the live birth on "Good Morning America"?
Wow.
I guess you didn't.
That was --
[ Laughter ]
That was this morning.
They had a live birth there.
The other morning shows said that was a shameful sweeps stunt.
The "Today" show issued a statement and said cameras have no
place in such a place.
[ Laughter ]
And they should be where they're supposed to be, up Katie
Couric's ass.
[ Laughter ]
[ Cheers and applause ]
And finally, election officials are continuing to meet --
I don't
know if you heard about this, but there was a disputed election
last year.
[ Laughter ]
So they're meeting on how to improve elections and voting in America.
They said at the very least we can all agree an election should
never again be decided by something as error-prone as a butterfly
ballot or the Supreme Court.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Okay, let us meet our panel.
[ Applause ]
We have, first off, a Congresswoman from California's 37th district.
She is chair of the bipartisan house women's caucus and executive
director of the League of African-American Women, Representative
Juanita Millender-McDonald.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Juanita: How are you, Bill?
Bill: How are you?
Juanita: Good to see you.
Thank you.
Bill: Thank you very much for being here.
[ Applause ]
He is chairman of the House entertainment industry task force and
a Republican Congressman from the 16th district of the Sunshine
State of Florida, Representative Mark Foley.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Hey, Congressman.
Mark: Hey, buddy.
Bill: How you doin'?
Thank you for being here.
Mark: Thank you.
Bill: He is an Emmy-winning documentarian rabble rouser and
headache to CEOs everywhere, Mr. Michael Moore.
[ Wild cheers and applause ]
Hello, Mr. Headache.
Michael: Thank you.
Bill: And he is the world's best-known consumer advocate and
the Green Party's candidate for president.
His new book, "The Ralph Nader Reader," is in stores everywhere.
[ Cheers and applause ]
And he made Al Gore cry, Ralph Nader!
[ Wild cheers and applause ]
[ Mixed boos ]
[ Applause ]
Okay, there you are.
Ralph, you made Al Gore cry.
That's why they --
[ Laughter ]
[ Cheers and applause ]
Everything that goes wrong with the Democrats is your fault, as we know.
[ Laughter ]
But it's funny because this Bush charm offensive --
we were
talking about it last night.
And after Bush got in --
[ Laughter ]
[ Cheers and applause ]
All I kept hearing was --
you know, he thinks he can charm
Washington, but this ain't Texas.
Washington, D.C., this is a big city.
You know, down in Texas you can just throw a barbecue.
[ Laughter ]
You could wear your cowboy boots.
You could give people nicknames, and the Republicans and
Democrats weren't that different and that would work.
But it's not going to work here in Washington.
But you know what?
It pretty much has.
[ Laughter ]
What's with the Democrats?
Juanita: I am sorry, Bill, it has not.
And it will not work here in Washington.
[ Applause ]
Bill: Well, it looks like it has so far.
I don't see the Democrats making any noise about this guy.
Juanita: It is not time to make noise.
Bill: Uh?
[ Laughter ]
Juanita: You wait until the budget comes out.
You wait until he presents his real proposal for education, then
the rubble --
rubber will hit the road.
Right now we're being courteous to this new administration.
And when he invites us over, we have a right to go there.
But by no means are we caving in.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Mark: You know, I think they're doing a little of the Texas two-step.
Because you wanna be popular and you wanna be reelected yourself.
And you're worried about the popularity this man may engender.
And I got to tell you, he's off to a great start.
The Congressional black caucus walked out of the electoral vote counting.
[ Cheers and applause ]
They didn't want to go to the inaugural address, yet you all go
and have tea at the White House.
I think it's a little --
Juanita: Mark, wait a minute.
We don't have to be popular, we're already popular.
We won the popular vote.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Michael: I think the problem here is that the Democrats,
present company excluded --
[ Laughter ]
--
Well, because I have a lot of faith and a lot of respect for
the Congressional black caucus.
They may be the only conscience that saves us through the next
four years.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Bill: Yeah, but you thought O.J. was innocent, Mike.
[ Laughter ]
Michael: Right, well.
[ Laughter ]
Bill: Just to put that in perspective there for a second.
Michael: I might be right.
The Democrats are a bunch of wimps.
They cave in all the time.
This is not the first time they've caved in.
Juanita: No, no, no.
Bill: They are wimps.
[ Laughter ]
Juanita: We are not wimps.
[ Mixed boos and applause ]
Michael: Let me just remind everyone that Al Gore in the
second debate said, "I agree with you," George Bush, 32 times.
32 times!
They agree on the death penalty.
They agree on the drug war.
They agree on eliminating manufacturing jobs and moving them to Mexico.
They went down the whole list --
Bill: And they're mostly wimps, because Ralph made Al Gore cry.
[ Laughter ]
[ Cheers and applause ]
[ Talking over each other ]
Juanita: Wait just a minute, Bill.
Wait just a minute, Bill.
[ Talking over each other ]
Bill: Al Gore ran a brilliant campaign.
And it was all Ralph's fault that they lost.
[ Laughter ]
[ Cheers and applause ]
Juanita: Bill, I --
no.
Michael: They hate Ralph Nader, they love Ross Perot.
Juanita: Just a moment, you're talking about Democrats now,
and I must step in.
[ Laughter ]
[ Applause ]
This is a 58-42 vote for this confirmation of Ashcroft.
Those are not wimps.
We have put it on the line.
Bill: But he's there, isn't he?
Juanita: He might be there --
[ Talking over each other ]
Michael: Not one out of 50 Democrats would stand up to
filibuster!
Not one!
Juanita: We have set a stage for the future appointment of the
Supreme Court.
We are giving this President Bush a warning.
Mark: That wasn't a warning.
Bill: Ooh!
Juanita: That's not a green light!
Bill: "I'm gonna, I'm gonna!"
Juanita: No, it is not a green light!
No, it's not.
Mark: Help me out, Bill.
Juanita: It could have been.
They thought it was going to be 60-40, but it was not.
Bill: Okay, but somehow, they turn their back on Ralph Nader,
whose, I think, alliances and theories are a lot more closer to
the Democratic Party.
He's anathema now.
[ Applause ]
But they go have --
watch movies and have barbecue with George Bush.
I don't get that on the Democrat side.
How come he's the bad guy?
Juanita: I am sorry, but I have never eaten a barbecued bone
with the president.
[ Laughter ]
[ Talking over each other ]
Ralph: But they do.
Look, Spencer Abraham, terrible on renewable energy, energy
conservation.
Basically an oil, gas and nuclear guy.
He got 99 votes for confirmation.
Gail Norton, all the environmental groups were against her.
Only 24 Democratic Senators voted against her.
And it's right down the line that way.
And it's not a very good, a very auspicious start for the
Democrats who can't even keep their votes together against what
they considered as the worst attorney general nomination in
modern times.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Juanita: Ralph, we recognize that --
[ Applause ]
Ralph: We have to teach the Democrats how to fight.
[ Laughter ]
Because they're gonna roll over on the tax cut.
Juanita: Mr. Nader, Mr. Nader --
Ralph: They're gonna roll over on a lot of things that --
Gore
had a bigger military budget during the campaign proposed than
George W. Bush.
They're going to go along with maybe a $1 trillion tax cut when
there's not enough money, we're told, to rebuild the schools, to
build community health clinics, upgrade public transit.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Juanita: Mr. Nader, Mr. Nader --
Ralph: Drinking water systems!
Bill: I apologize Congresswoman, but I have to take a
commercial.
We'll be right back.
[ Cheers and applause ]
[ Cheers and applause ]
Bill: Okay, let's talk about Ronald Reagan.
It is his 90th birthday today.
And this is a big event for Washington, D.C.
[ Cheers and applause ]
And of course, the ex-President did some good things.
But to me, a lot of Republicans have two blind spots --
their
hatred of Bill Clinton and their deification of Ronald Reagan.
[ Applause ]
Okay, okay.
You know, when it comes to Ronald Reagan they're like the doting
parents of an 8-year-old.
Everything he does is remarkable.
[ Laughter ]
He singlehandedly won the Cold War, which is --
[ Cheers and applause ]
That's the one that gets me the most.
The Cold War was so much more won by Harry Truman at the
beginning and Gorbachev at the end than Ronald Reagan.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Michael: First, the problem with Reagan as I see it is that he
was the beginning of the depleting of the political gene pool.
[ Laughter ]
When Americans settled for somebody who really wasn't and
shouldn't have been in that office, wasn't quite there all the time.
[ Cheers and applause ]
And once you settle for a Ronald Reagan, then it's easy to settle
for a George Bush.
[ Cheers and applause ]
[ Scattered boos ]
Once you settle for Bush I, then it's really easy to settle for Bush II.
[ Cheers and applause ]
You know, this should be evolution instead of de-evolution.
[ Laughter ]
What's next?
Mark: Let me just say, I campaigned for Jimmy Carter
against Ronald Reagan.
I was a Democrat at the time.
I was depressed that the governor had won the election.
Michael: His medication lapsed.
[ Laughter ]
Mark: Two years later, I was proud of my country again
because Ronald Reagan gave us the ideas and dreams that we could
soar again as a nation.
[ Scattered boos ]
[ Applause ]
Michael: Here's what Reagan did.
He gave weapons to the Ayatollah so that he could raise money for
the contras, which then helped bring a crack epidemic into the
United States.
That's what Ronald Reagan did, and that's his legacy.
That's his legacy.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Mark: I think his legacy was much bigger than that.
Michael: If I stood up to the Ayatollah, I'd be shot.
Ralph: He tripled the deficit.
He tripled the --
Mark: No, the Democratic Congress tripled it.
Juanita: No, voodoo economics is what Reagan brought --
[ All talking at once ]
[ Cheers ]
Ralph: He undermined poverty programs and gave corporate welfare in
the hundreds of billions of dollars to corporations.
He cut the health and safety standards, but he was a great comedian.
[ Laughter ]
[ Applause ]
Juanita: Wait just a minute.
You men are not gonna monopolize this stage.
[ Laughter ]
[ Cheers and applause ]
While we are saying happy birthday to the President, he is not
bigger than life.
We have buildings, roads, bridges --
Bill: Airports.
Juanita: Airports, named after this man.
I don't see not one thing named after Lyndon Johnson and he
signed the civil rights laws.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Ralph: Let me just say --
let me just say --
let me just finish here.
Mark: Why hasn't your party suggested naming something after
Lyndon Johnson?
Bill: Because they have a sense of decency about it.
Because, you know, usually we wait until someone is long gone so
history can make a judgment.
They want to put him on Mount Rushmore, on a coin, on a license plate.
In other words, Ronald Reagan should jump ahead of George
Washington and Abraham Lincoln onto the license plate.
Michael: He was very funny.
Juanita: They want to save that who?
For Hillary Clinton?
I'm happy that you're saying that a woman will be President in the --
[ Cheers ]
Ralph: What other President would say the following --
"80% of air pollution comes from trees and other vegetation."
[ Laughter ]
What other President would say that?
"A nuclear missile once launched could always be recalled."
[ Laughter ]
What other President would say, "I hear there are 17 million
Americans who go to bed hungry at night."
That's absolutely true.
They're all on a diet.
Who would get away with that?
[ Laughter ]
Mark: Happy birthday, Mr. President.
Michael: For the young people in here, the White House then was
really comedy central.
I mean, that really --
that's exactly what was going on.
Bill: It's easy to pick on --
Mark: I don't think it's fair to consistently berate him.
I think he's done some phenomenal things.
I think when he said, "Mr. Gorbachev, turn down this wall," there
was a turning point in American history.
Bill: Well, wait a second.
He said, "Tear down this wall."
[ Laughter ]
He wasn't in a Motel 6, that's Clinton.
But you know what?
As I said, I mean, to give credit to Reagan for ending the Cold
War because he was there at the end, when it was really the
Berlin Airlift, the Marshall Plan, the Cuban Missile Crisis and
Gorbachev.
Mark: I grant you that.
I'm not saying Ronald Reagan deserves sole credit.
No President deserves sole credit for anything this country has endured.
But I will tell you, he was able to lift the spirits of this country.
And oftentimes, we need that.
Oftentimes, we need that.
[ Booing ]
Juanita: Do we have to name everything "Ronald Reagan," for
heaven's sake?
Bill: But he was there for the lifted spirits, but when it
came to the things he just talked about, like eliminating the
deficit and eliminating welfare, it was Bill Clinton who actually
did those things.
Juanita: Right.
[ Applause ]
Let me take a commercial.
We'll be right back.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Announcer: Join us tomorrow, when our guests will be country
star Naomi Judd, "Crossfire's" Bill Press, California Senator
Barbara Boxer and Florida representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.
Bill: All right, I wanted to get --
excuse me.
What's going on now is still Bill Clinton with his $700,000 office.
They made the point, his enemies did, that the next most
expensive office is Ronald Reagan, $285,000.
Now, besides the fact that, why does Ronald Reagan, no offense
intended, even need an office?
We want to talk about government waste.
$700,000 --
no, I admit Clinton left office with all the class of
an XFL halftime show.
[ Laughter ]
But --
okay, you two can probably give some perspective on the
amount that the government wastes.
$700,000, people are focusing on corporate welfare, the Pentagon,
the broadcast giveaway.
We're talking about billions of dollars, right?
Ralph: Tens of billions.
The broadcast giveaway alone, which Bob Dole creditively opposed
to the broadcast industry, was $70 billion, and it's our property.
Bill: We're talking about $700,000 for an office, when this
government is losing your money at rates --
they're masters of misdirection.
Look over here, $700,000!
Over here --
Michael: They just spend all this time criticizing Clinton
about the furniture and the knickknacks and all this --
is the press that lazy?
Don't they know there already is a target, and he's sitting in the
White House and he's still --
and he wasn't elected, and he shouldn't be there?
[ Cheers and applause ]
What is the deal?!
Juanita: What's amazing to me is that this country can not get
enough of Clinton.
Now Mr. Clinton is in a Manhattan apartment.
Ronald Reagan's apartment 20 years ago cost about $200,000 and
something.
With the cost of living in New York, you can ill afford to get
something that is decent for the ex-President.
However, the president has said he will pay half of that.
Mark: But do you know how many --
you could provide in Arkansas with that $700,000?
There has to be some perspective.
Juanita: Wait a minute.
Wait a minute.
Mark: I always have to listen to this idea that somehow --
Juanita: I'm sorry.
Did you say something like this when Ronald Reagan got almost a
$300,000 apartment 20 years ago?
[ Talking at the same time ]
Mark: --
Of President Reagan's office now is $289,000 --
that's a 12-year old --
[ Talking at the same time ]
Ralph: A president's office suite could be in the Federal
Courthouse in New York City and, he should have gotten his office
in the Federal Court.
Michael: This is important!
What's important is what you said during the campaign, which is,
if we just took the money that we spend defending Western Europe
and Japan, two places that have the money to defend themselves --
Ralph: Against nonexistent enemies.
Michael: Against nonexistent enemies.
If we took just that money, there would be enough money to
guarantee the college tuition of every young person in this country.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Why don't we do that?!
Why don't we talk about that?!
[ Applause ]
Bill: I gotta go to commercial.
I'm sorry.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Announcer: In Washington, if you'd like to join us for a
taping of "Politically Incorrect," please call --
[ Applause ]
Bill: Okay.
All right.
What is it you wanted to say to Ralph Nader?
Juanita: I want to say to Ralph, the Democrats are ready to fight.
Ralph Nader, get out of the way.
Bill: Ooh.
Michael: Don't start fighting.
Bill: Tomorrow, Naomi Judd, Senator Barbara Boxer, representative Ileana
Ros-Lehtinen.
