Week In Politics: Scottish Referendum, Hillary Clinton, Syria
NPR
Friday, September 19, 2014
Update RequiredTo play audio, update browser or
Flash plugin.
Copyright 2024 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post and David Brooks of The New York Times discuss Scotland's vote on independence and Hillary Clinton's speech at a Democrats women's event.
Transcript
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
Now politics with our Friday regulars, columnists David Brooks of The New York Times and E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post and the Brookings Institution. Good to see you both.
DAVID BROOKS: Good to see you.
E.J. DIONNE: Good to be with you.
SIEGEL: And let's start with what Tam was just reporting on. E.J., is the gender gap something that's likely to fade away or do you think the difference between Democrats and Republicans with women votes could determine the outcomes this November?
DIONNE: The Democrats have needed a substantial margin among women ever since 1980, when the gender gap first started appearing. I think the most striking thing that's happened is that so-called women's issues are now to a remarkable degree economic issues. I think you heard that in the Hillary Clinton clip. There was a lot of talk in 2008 about her breaking the glass ceiling.
What she said this time - she was talking about lower income women - it feels to them as though the floor has collapsed beneath their feet. And the issues that are being talked about - child care, family leave, equal pay for equal work, minimum wage increases - are all about economics. And that's 'cause the gender gap is especially important in the election among less well-off women.
Yes, abortion and contraception are issues in some races like Colorado. But I think it's now about economics, which presents the Republicans with very particular challenges.
SIEGEL: David, what do you think?
BROOKS: I don't see the challenges. If you look at The New York Times-CBS poll this week, women are even. Half are Republican. Half are Democrat. Democrats have no advantage, which is unusual. And so Republicans seem to be holding very well among female voters, in part because I think the issues have migrated to economics and Republicans are scoring reasonably well on that. But especially because terrorism and security is back.
And we used to have this phrase back in the Bush era - the security moms. And that seems to be happening too as foreign-policy comes in the fore, people - male and female - go for Republicans.
SIEGEL: But if women are splitting evenly between Democrats and Republicans, in that case, in that poll, men would be far more Republican.
BROOKS: Right, so there is still a gap among men and women. But usually Democrats have a bigger advantage. And that - The New York Times-CBS poll was surprisingly bullish for Republicans, I thought.
DIONNE: Yeah, and that's the question - is whether that's going to get repeated. Because I do think coming off the beheadings, security did enter people's minds in a way that it wasn't there before, including the minds of women. And I think what you're hearing in what Hillary Clinton said and a lot of other Democrats are saying, is a push back toward those economic issues and obviously President Obama's strong stance on ISIL or ISIS is designed to - part of the Democratic side's inoculation.
SIEGEL: Speaking of which, something very usual happened in Congress this week, which was that both houses approved President Obama's plan for dealing with the so-called Islamic State. There were interesting coalitions in both houses. David, what happened? What's going on in Washington? Quick and rapid action.
BROOKS: We can all unite against the caliphates - fantastic. No, I do think it's just the beheadings, the awfulness of ISIS, the mere strategic fact you just can't have a caliphate in the middle of the Middle East I think did unite people. What's clearly happening in the debate, though, is we're having a debate about missionary.
You're seeing generals and other people talk about, you know, to clear some of the cities you actually do need more troops. And so what's going to be interesting is not you have this initial burst of approval, with the exception of people on the left and the right, but how people react as the mission gets more - gets bigger and deeper.
DIONNE: If you love bipartisanship, you will love this vote, these votes in both houses. Both parties were split. They were split in almost the same way. Here's a good list - Senators Warren, Gillibrand, Paul, Manchin, Cruz, Sanders, Begich. The only thing you could imagine those folks voting the same on is a resolution commending volunteer fire departments or something like that.
(LAUGHTER)
BROOKS: From the left to the right end of the Democratic...
DIONNE: Right. And they all - they've all voted against the Syria aid. And so I think this is a positive development. We're having a real debate about foreign-policy. There is a real disagreement. But it is not just splitting across party lines.
SIEGEL: Do you agree with that, David?
BROOKS: Yeah - no, I do. But I guess I was impressed by the size of the vote still. You know, I thought that, you know, there was this people - especially a lot of people who were contemplating running for president - Cruz, Paul, Warren. But I thought more of the parties would have gone off on those left and right wing edges. But no, you still have some national security Democrats. You still have some interventionist Republicans - pretty solid majority.
DIONNE: In fact, in the Senate, 44 Democrats yes - nine no. That's really a remarkable vote on something having to do with war.
SIEGEL: OK, another matter. In Scotland yesterday, a move for independence was defeated 55 to 45 percent in a national referendum. The head of the Scottish National Party - Scotland's regional first minister, Alex Salmond, had called for the vote and campaigned hard for it. Today he announced that he will step down.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ALEX SALMOND: The position is this - we lost the referendum vote. But Scotland can still carry the political initiative. Scotland can still emerge as the real winner.
SIEGEL: And indeed it can be argued that by deepening Scottish autonomy or as the Brits say, devolution, that the Scots have actually won something, even though they lost big. What did you - David, what did you make of the Scottish referendum?
BROOKS: Yeah, well, there are the obvious economic arguments for - I thought Scotland should not go this way, but I go for culturally. You want to multiply your identities. You want to be both a Scot and a Brit and just like you want to be a Pennsylvanian and an American. Secondly it's always better to be a medium-sized fish in a big pond than a big fish in a small pond. And so you want to throw your weight around, have a certain moral grandeur in the world. And you can do that as a Brit. You can't do that as a Scot.
(LAUGHTER)
SIEGEL: OK, E.J.
DIONNE: You know, I identified a lot with I think the swing voters in this, whose hearts said yes, but whose heads said no. And they're the ones who decided this. And I'm reminded of a saying among my people in Quebec for why separatism keeps losing. And the saying is people are for a free and independent Quebec within a strong and unified Canada.
And I think a lot of people in Scotland had that sentiment. I also think that this was a very important victory for Prime Minister David Cameron. If he had lost this, he would have been in a lot of trouble as the man who presided over the dissolution of the United Kingdom. But it was...
SIEGEL: On the other hand, it was also a victory for the British Labour Party.
DIONNE: Well, that's what I was going to say. The irony here is that the most powerful arguments at the end that I think were the most important in pulling back Labour Party voters to a no vote, were made by former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who said this is final. You got to be careful here. So Brown saved the political standing of the guy who beat him.
SIEGEL: E.J. Dionne, David Brooks - thanks for talking with us.
BROOKS: Good to be with you.
DIONNE: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
View this story on npr.org
Follow us for more stories like this
CapRadio provides a trusted source of news because of you. As a nonprofit organization, donations from people like you sustain the journalism that allows us to discover stories that are important to our audience. If you believe in what we do and support our mission, please donate today.
Donate Today