Lincoln Chafee's Brief & Unspectacular Campaign

ANNOUNCER: This is the Washington Week Webcast Extra.

GWEN IFILL: Hello, and welcome.

I'm Gwen Ifill.

I'm joined by Molly Ball of The Atlantic, Carol Lee of The Wall Street Journal, Manu

Raju of CNN, and Josh Gerstein of POLITICO - all of them, oddly enough, currently or

formerly employed by POLITICO.

(Laughter.)

There's a conspiracy theory we'll talk about later.

But there are a lot of loose ends that we couldn't get to during the regular broadcast.

First, Benghazi.

Hillary Clinton may have won the political war this week, but is there still a legal war

- a serious legal war - underfoot, Josh?

JOSH GERSTEIN: Well, I mean, I think the FBI investigation is pretty serious.

I saw that Jim Comey, the FBI director, used the word "investigation" in connection with

it publicly for the first time this week.

GWEN IFILL: What's significant - what's significant about the use of the word?

JOSH GERSTEIN: Well, you know, there are different ways in the legal system these

things are referred to.

The first time he talked to reporters about this, he just kept calling it "the matter"

over and over again.

And there can be a preliminary inquiry, and then a full investigation.

So I don't know what he's signifying, but one of the shoes everyone's been waiting to

see if it would drop is, does that get converted into a full kind of criminal

investigation?

Even if it, say, weren't focused on Hillary, would it be focused on people at the State

Department who might have sent her classified information?

Barely broached at all during this 11-hour marathon, but a much bigger deal, probably,

than this testimony if that investigation were to go in an unwelcome direction for her.

GWEN IFILL: Is that why the FBI was reportedly unhappy about what the president said

about this?

JOSH GERSTEIN: I mean, they did feel that the president was preempting them in this I

think it was 60 Minutes interview where he said he didn't think this was a serious - a

serious matter or that it was - didn't have serious national security consequences.

That's what the FBI's investigating, and this comes up regularly.

The president has done this in the Bradley Manning case and a few others where he makes

some kind of a general comment about the way he thinks it's headed, and you know, he's

the head of the branch that's doing this investigation, so it would be better for him to

reserve comment.

And we saw FBI agents and others making that suggestion back to the White House on the

front page of The New York Times.

GWEN IFILL: While we're at the White House, Carol, let's talk about something else the

president did this week.

He signed - he vetoed a defense policy bill.

What's the significance of what he did - of what he didn't do?

CAROL LEE: Well, he's - every year he's threatened to veto this, what's known at the

National Defense Authorization Act, which sets policy - military policy, but also

authorizes funding for the military.

And this year he did it, and he did it for - his primary reason was because it didn't

handle the budget in the way that he wanted to.

He wanted an NDAA that got rid of sequestration.

But if you really look at what

he's doing, one, he's setting up for a major budget fight.

There's a bunch of deadlines that are coming up: November 3rd is the debt ceiling;

December 11th, you know, the budget; there's a highway funding bill that's running out.

So all of these things are kind of being punted to be dealt with somehow together.

But at this - to me - I've covered the White House for six, seven years - and it's

Guantanamo.

This is his last chance to stop Congress from doing - from having the ban - the biggest

problem he has with the ban on Guantanamo detainees coming to the U.S., and it's his -

and that is codified in this law.

And he's - it's why he's threatened to veto it in past years, but ultimately signed it.

And if he were to let that go through this year, it would tie his hands for basically

the rest of his presidency, and he really wants that closed.

GWEN IFILL: This is one of the reasons why it's important to pay attention to things

that seem obscure, because that's where policy hides.

Let's talk a little bit more about the debt limit ceiling, which it seems we are

approaching again.

MANU RAJU: Again.

GWEN IFILL: And we keep approaching it again and kicking it down the road.

But this - the first test is going to be in the House.

MANU RAJU: It is.

It's a big problem for the House.

Republicans don't have a solution yet.

You know, the White House is saying they just want a clean debt ceiling increase, and

what that means is that they don't want any restrictions tied to it, they just want it

increased into next year - probably actually into 2017.

Actually, they'd take it as long as they could.

But Republicans in the Senate actually agree.

They know this is a big problem politically.

They're willing to punt this up until the beginning of March 2017 because they worry

about the prospects of a debt default, which is the significance of raising the national

debt ceiling.

But in the House, they do not have the votes to pass a clean debt

ceiling increase.

So, then, what do you do?

That's what John Boehner in his final week in office is struggling to figure out.

They were supposed to vote today, Gwen, on a - on a bill to raise the debt ceiling that

would tie it to a bunch of conservative policy ideas, but they couldn't even get the

votes for that because there are fundamentally a group of Republicans who will not vote

for a debt ceiling increase no matter what's on it.

So the question is, what can they pass?

And there's not much time, and Paul Ryan's coming into office soon and he's going to

have to deal with it, potentially, if John Boehner doesn't deal with it.

And there's talk maybe about a short-term increase, but then they'll have to deal with

it again.

GWEN IFILL: And the White House is poised to make this another big issue of

irresponsibility on the part of the Republicans.

MANU RAJU: Yeah, and I think this is actually probably maybe even a bigger problem than

they've had in the past, you know, because a lot of these guys just - they're tired of

caving on this issue.

And you know, as Carol was suggesting earlier, there's another big fight right after

that, is funding the government on December 11th.

And they need to figure out a way to deal with extending government funding through the

next year, and there's no agreement there.

Only thing different there is that there is actually talks happening between the White

House and congressional leaders that are happening.

But if that comes after a default, who knows what resolution they can ultimately reach.

GWEN IFILL: OK, Molly.

We're going to take people inside the way we do our jobs.

We had two candidates today run out of - this week run out of time and drop out of the

race - Jim Webb, the former senator from Virginia, and Lincoln Chafee, the former

governor of Rhode Island and senator from Rhode Island.

And you had set out to do a profile of Lincoln Chafee for The Atlantic Monthly's or The

Atlantic's January issue, and then he drops out of the race.

So tell us what you found in your reporting that in the end didn't turn into the profile

maybe that you would have hoped?

MOLLY BALL: Well, the piece ended up running online as a campaign obituary using the

material that I gathered spending a beautiful day in New Hampshire with Lincoln Chafee.

I set out to profile him, really, because if you look at the number of candidate(s),

that's really one of the major features of this campaign cycle that makes it different

from other presidential years, is just the number of candidates.

GWEN IFILL: Yeah.

MOLLY BALL: With the number of Democrats and Republicans combined, which was 22 at its

peak - it's down to only 18 now - (laughter) - is the biggest field of candidates in a

hundred years.

So why are all these people running?

What has gotten into them?

What motivates?

What are they thinking?

So, you know, Chafee seemed to me like possibly the most pointless of all the candidates

- (laughter) - so I figured I'd go and try and figure out what he was thinking as a way

of getting into this whole phenomenon, and I really couldn't figure it out.

And I think a lot of people had their first exposure to Chafee in last week's Democratic

debate, and that was really the takeaway - was what is he doing there, what does he think

he is up to?

You know, I couldn't even get him to say that he thought he was going to be president.

He didn't have this sort of arrogant, divine sense of mission that he just thought that

he would get there.

GWEN IFILL: And voters seemed to get that he didn't really know what he was doing.

MOLLY BALL: Yeah, it was amazing.

Over and over again on the campaign trail, people would raise their hands and say, I'm

not trying to be rude, but why are you running?

And he would sort of take it in stride and say, well, I've got this great resume.

There wasn't even an issue, right?

A lot of candidates are like a message candidate, an issue candidate.

There wasn't a single thing that was driving him to say this is the one thing I've got

to teach people or impress on people.

It was just he just thought he was a good candidate.

GWEN IFILL: If he didn't have a motivating reason for getting out - for getting in, why

get out?

MOLLY BALL: Well, that's a good question.

And if you listened to his speech getting out of the race today, it was just as sort of

pointless and difficult to understand as the rest of his candidacy, right?

(Laughter.)

There was this, like, weird analogy to the Lysistrata, I believe, and then

- and there's this - (laughter) - he said I hope that a chance can be given to peace.

And you know, in his announcement he talked about the metric system.

So his candidacy was just sort of wacky - GWEN IFILL: All over the place.

MOLLY BALL: - and all over the map.

He seemed like a very nice man.

He did not seem like somebody who had any business being in the presidential race.

GWEN IFILL: Well, there's something to be said for nice people running for president,

but it would be nice if they were more than just -

MOLLY BALL: A block of granite, as well.

He described himself repeatedly: I'm a block of granite.

GWEN IFILL: Block of granite.

That was my favorite, when he described himself as a block of granite to describe his

consistency.

My other favorite is when our pal Wolf Blitzer said to him, you know

you're going to look silly if you keep doing this.

And that was certainly a death

knell.

MOLLY BALL: Right, it was like as a friend.

Senator Chafee, I've got to ask you why you're doing - (laughter) -

MANU RAJU: What are you doing?

GWEN IFILL: Why are you doing this?

MOLLY BALL: Hear that enough times, I guess it finally sinks in.

GWEN IFILL: Well, let us know who you're profiling next and we'll be sure to keep track

and see who's about to drop out next.

MOLLY BALL: Like the Sports Illustrated curse, right.

Yeah.

JOSH GERSTEIN: Curse, yeah.

GWEN IFILL: Exactly.

Thank you, everybody.

There's more online on the Washington Week website, including footage from Hillary

Clinton's last marathon congressional appearance in 1993, and the first lady at the time

was defending the Clinton administration's health care plan.

You can find that in the Washington Week vault at PBS.org/WashingtonWeek.

And we'll see you next time on the Washington Week Webcast Extra.