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Saturday Morning News

Kim Alfano and Peter Fenn Discuss the Final Days of Campaign 2000

Aired November 4, 2000 - 8:18 a.m. ET

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

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: As we count down to Election Day, we consider how the race will play out over the last crucial days. Joining us here in Washington, Kim Alfano, a Republican who is president and CEO of a media consulting firm, and Peter Fenn, cofounder of the communications firm. He is on the other side of the aisle.

Good to see you both. Thanks for being here.

PETER FENN, DEMOCRATIC CONSULTANT: Good to be here.

O'BRIEN: It's getting awfully interesting here toward the end. Let's, first of all, dispense with this DUI thing right away.

KIM ALFANO, REPUBLICAN CONSULTANT: Sure, sure.

O'BRIEN: The fact that it hasn't come out, Kim, till this juncture of the race, was that a mistake on the part of the Bush campaign? Surely they must have thought eventually this would become public knowledge?

ALFANO: I'd have to say that I think early on George Bush, I thought, was very forthcoming, sort of in an unprecedented way. He came out early on and said, you know, America, I had a problem. I had an alcohol problem early in my life. I've been over that hump. It's made me a wiser person, but I want to be straight with you. He did that right away. And he said OK, now that I've told you that, let's move on and talk about the issues and let's, you know, I've already told you everything I need to know.

So I assumed that when he did that, he assumed that it was, you know, it's out there. Everything's out there. And he'd been through a gubernatorial race where all these things had been out.

O'BRIEN: But there's a...

ALFANO: So, you know, I don't think he was trying to do anything sneaky...

O'BRIEN: It's a sin of omission, you could suggest, right?

ALFANO: You know, I think that it's coming out, this whole cover-up thing that everybody's talking about, I think that it's ridiculous. It came out four days before the election. You have to ask yourself, you know, your poll that you just showed, people who attack at the end are generally, you know, as understood by the voters, the ones who are losing.

This came out. The Democrats are a little bit desperate, you know, and here it is at the end of the campaign. George Bush covered this. He covered it brilliantly, I think, early on, and he said look, you know, I am a human being, just like the Democrats have been saying for seven, eight years now, look, man these people are human beings and, you know, you have to give them the credit for having real lives.

O'BRIEN: Now, Peter, let me ask you, I know you have something to say and I know you'll say it anyway, but let me just ask you this. On the Democratic side...

ALFANO: He's been kicking me under the table, by the way.

O'BRIEN: ... you could make a case that voters had already made a determination that George W. Bush had these apparent skeletons in his closet and it's already been factored into the numbers.

FENN: Right. I think actually, Kim protests a bit too much here. I think what you have, Miles, is a situation where he was clearly not forthright, where he threw out well, gee, I had this problem and I overcame it. But, you know, he answered a question from a "Dallas Times" reporter when asked about this and he said no, that there was no arrest after 1968...

ALFANO: No, that's not true.

FENN: Well, according to the reporter...

ALFANO: That's not true.

FENN: According to the reporter, he said no. Now, what you have...

ALFANO: No, the...

FENN: No, I didn't interrupt you so maybe you can not interrupt me.

ALFANO: OK.

FENN: So the...

O'BRIEN: Let's be polite here.

FENN: Yes, let's be polite. If you look at the "New Republic" of a year ago, he clearly, the reporter clearly said that. He said it on the plane yesterday. So let's dispense with that issue.

The other problem, I think, about George W. Bush on this is that he has not been forthright on a number of things. He was not forthright on why he leapfrogged 500 people to get into the National Guard. He was not, he will not answer the questions about drug use during the time.

So I think if you're going to talk about how you overcame this problem of alcohol and you're going to put your private life out there the way he has, then you should answer the questions that are put to you and he has not answered them.

The other thing I think, though, that's much more important is the whole question of truthfulness on issues. I mean if you look at the debate and the Patients Bill of Rights, the trouble with George W. Bush is he said oh, well, we put together a great patients bill of rights in Texas. In fact, he vetoed it. The thing got into law without his signature.

You know, if you look at those kinds of things -- the Social Security issue, he talks about Social Security not being a government program. What is he talking about?

O'BRIEN: All right, Kim is stepping on your foot now, so...

FENN: Yeah, she's kicking me now.

ALFANO: No, I...

O'BRIEN: No filibusters.

ALFANO: I'm gentle. I'm a kinder, gentler Republican. You know, it's remarkable, it's the end of the race. It's obvious. You know, they spent five, eight years saying, you know, the personal life of someone shouldn't matter and, you know, they've been convincing the American people that something that their president did in office was, you know, off the table, something that happened over, you know, almost 30 years ago, it ought to be off the table.

With regard to what he said about lying about the issues, again, you know, they have this way in politics of sort of spinning the truth. The fact of the matter is George Bush did not say it wasn't a federal program. He said that he was talking about how it can be changed. And I mean here it is, it's political countdown time. We've got a couple of days left. We should expect this from the Democrats. They're behind.

O'BRIEN: Well, no word, no utterance is too small to exploit.

FENN: Well, I mean, you know, it does seem unbelievable that his exact words were that it is not a government program, but -- and it's a people program. I don't quite know about the difference between a government program and a people program. But this is the guy who said we ought to talk to the Europeans about putting troops in Bosnia and Kosovo. Hello? There are 50,000 of the 60,000 troops are European troops.

I mean I think what we're talking about is fitness for office here...

ALFANO: Absolutely. FENN: And the question is whether this guy, George W. Bush, is really fit to be President of the United States and I think when you look at the record in Texas, 50th in health care, you know, education, which he brags about, it turns out the Rand study says it's been a disaster, you know, the worst environment...

ALFANO: And the Rand study is a Democratic...

FENN: It's a very Republican organization. But the worst environmental record in the country in Houston. I mean you have a record there which does not justify someone getting a promotion to president.

O'BRIEN: All right, briefly, Kim, last word, because we got to balance it out, but we're out of time.

ALFANO: They're losing.

FENN: We're winning.

O'BRIEN: Kim Alfano, Peter Fenn, sorry we can't continue this discussion.

FENN: Thanks, Miles. No, we could go on for hours.

O'BRIEN: We just got started. All right, thanks very much.

FENN: Thanks.

PHILLIPS: That's a tough crowd.

O'BRIEN: It is. It is. They're over there kicking each other under the table there.

PHILLIPS: Yeah, for Saturday morning, pretty early.

FENN: We can hug now.

PHILLIPS: Oh, they're hugging now. That's all right.

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