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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: cAPSLOCK who wrote (156264)	6/28/2001 1:12:16 AM
From: Thomas A Watson	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769667

Katherine Harris Trounces Hillary in Arms Length TV Face-Off newsmax.com A Woman vs a wimp. She was already a familiar face to TV news junkies. But Wednesday night, when she outshined Democratic Party great white female hope Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton during a dual appearance on Fox News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes," Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris catapulted herself to national political stardom. While Harris was radiant as she sparred with both conservative Hannity and liberal Colmes, the former first lady declined to participate in any real give and take, accepting only solicitous questions from Colmes in a pre-taped segment that could have been a campaign commercial. But Colmes, a superior debater when a conservative is in his rhetorical gunsights, undoubtedly had no choice. Ever since Mrs. Clinton was humiliated under unfettered questioning by Buffalo talk radio host Tom Bauerle at the outset of her Senate campaign, her handlers have avoided spontaneous question and answer sessions wherever possible. (See: Hillary: I Did Not Have Sex with that Man, Vince Foster) Here's the kind of prosecutorial questioning Harris was subjected to -- and relished -- during her session on "Hannity & Colmes": COLMES: Let's talk about (U.S. Civil Rights Commission Chairwoman) Mary Frances Berry. She may be a Gore supporter. Look, you came under fire for being a Bush supporter. Everybody supports somebody. HARRIS: That's what I said. I said we all have our preferences. But when it comes to excercising the law, clearly she had a mandate, she couldn't violate that. And she had to follow due process. COLMES: But you don't feel that she was skewered because she may be a Gore supporter any more than you..... HARRIS: I'm not criticizing her because of her preference. COLMES: Let's look at what she said today. Here's what her remarks were. BERRY: (On videotape) The result was black voters in Florida were about ten times more likely to have their ballots rejected than non-black voters. African-Americans were 11 percent of the population but cast 54 percent of the spoiled ballots. COLMES: Do you disagree with those statistics? HARRIS: Whenever you're looking at a precinct that had "X' amount of minority voters, it's really difficult to say whose ballots were spoiled. Because they don't have names on them, number one. Number two, in terms of spoiled ballots -- the reason the Civil Rights Commission, we're told, focused on Florida was because of the number of our spoiled ballots, not because it was a close election. But Illinois had more spoiled ballots than we did and we have a much larger population. Furthermore, in 1996, there were about 2.6 percent of spoiled ballots (in Florida). In this last election, only 2.8. The well prepared Harris continued to hit question after question out of the park. In marked contrast Hillary Clinton, who appeared at the end of the program only via telephone and when Harris was safely gone, stuck to less risky ground. Here's a sample of the kind of questions Mrs. Clinton deigned to answer: COLMES: You came to the Senate with a unique set of credentials. Did you have to fight any pre-conceived notions about who you are? HILLARY: Well, I just try to be who I am every single day. I work with my colleagues trying to learn how to be the best senator I can be. And, you know, I've found a very welcoming and collegial atmoshpere. So, from my perspective it's been a great experience so far. I feel like we're getting a lot of things done in New York. And I just hope that people are actually seeing me for the kind of person that I try to be and the kind of senator that I want to be. The exchange between Hannity and Colmes at the end of the show captured the essence of Hillary's all-holds-barred interview rules. HANNITY: I'd pay, I'd pay for the opportunity that you had today. It's killing me. It's killing me. COLMES: If you'd be a good liberal, you'd have that opportunity. ........................... tom watson tosiwmee