'Special Report' Panel on Ashley Dupre and the Issue of Race in the White House
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}This is a rush transcript of "Special Report With Brit Hume" from March 13, 2008. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She is a great person. A lot of people portray her to be this monster, which she definitely has the biggest heart. She definitely had a rough life, and she definitely, at the age that she is, is a strong independent woman. I think people should look at that aspect instead of what the media is portraying her out to be.
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BRIT HUME, HOST: Until today, Ashley Alexandra Dupree, a.k.a. the prostitute "Kristin," was an indistinct figure. And then came those pictures in good resolution from her own page on My Space, and now we all kind of know what she looks like.
Some thoughts on this whole case now from Fred Barnes, Executive Editor of "The Weekly Standard," Mort Kondracke, Executive Editor of "Roll Call," and the syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer, FOX News contributors all.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Fred, looking at these pictures, this woman, not fully, but to some extent comes to life as a real person and not just a murky figure in the background of this scandal -- your thoughts?
FRED BARNES, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, "THE WEEKLY STANDARD": Well, I don't think she's the victim. But look, there's a pattern here. Here is a young woman who goes to New York at 17, wants to be a singer, comes from a terrible background, according to her --
HUME: And her friends too.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}BARNES: And her friends say that -- a horrible home background, goes to New York and doesn't make it, and falls into the dark side of life and becomes a prostitute. Not a streetwalker, but someone who for a very high price will go and be a prostitute.
Novels have been written about this. It's not something that's new. What is new is Eliot Spitzer, not this young woman.
And if you want to feel sorry for a young woman, the ones I feel sorry for are Eliot Spitzer's daughters. I don't know what he is going to tell them, but I think he will have to spend the rest of his life making it up to them.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}MORT KONDRACKE, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, "ROLL CALL": I agree with all that. This is a girl who didn't finish high school, had no particular skills that she could sell for enough money to make it in life --
HUME: Because the singing didn't work out.
KONDRACKE: The singing didn't work out, although it's beginning to pick up now.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}HUME: Well, there will be some novelty value in her songs, and for a while people will download them and listen to them. But the question is will any contract come out of it? One doubts it.
KONDRACKE: Yes, exactly.
And Spitzer is the interesting case here. The various pop psychologists have been trying to analyze this from a distance and say, well, this is the example of like the tribal warrior chief who gets his choice of all the maidens in the village, this kind of stuff.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}There are a lot of politicians who act like this. But, then again, there are a lot of politicians who don't.
HUME: One of the things you do hear from some quarters is he must have had some deep wish to get caught.
KONDRACKE: I don't think so. He went to great lengths to of avoid getting caught.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}HUME: Charles, your thoughts?
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: Well, I disagree. I think there are two kinds of politicians who do this kind of stuff. You have the Bill Clintons, who are sociopaths -- no conscience, no shame, no governor, no sort of controls, no superego -- to do a little pop psychology of my own.
HUME: Look, you're titled. You're a board certified recovering psychiatrist, right?
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}KRAUTHAMMER: In remission, but for you, I'll come out of rehab and I'll try it once more.
The Clintons are the ones who are 100 pierce percent narcissistic. I see Spitzer, who is more of a control type guy, as more of a 90 percent narcissist, with a 10 percent self-loathing. Perhaps he knows that he doesn't deserve everything he has, that he got it al on the silver spoon. Who knows?
But I suspect deep down he's got that element in him which you don't find in a Clinton, so that he engages in this risky behavior, and it's win-win. If he gets away with it, he's king of the world. I mean, he's getting away with stuff that he's putting people in jail for. It's a huge rush.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Now, if he gets caught and destroys his life, in a deep and sick sense it satisfies the part of him that is self-loathing and he's get what he thinks he deserves.
Now, you don't consciously do any of this, but I think it explains how a guy with his kind of control, his kind of directed life, ends up doing this.
But, as I say, in a Clinton, I'm not surprised. And Clinton is a guy who went out and denied it and got away with it.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}HUME: Isn't it deeply plausible, though, to view him as a man who knew very well what risks he was taking, who had a yen, as men will, for a young, and, as we can now see, quite attractive woman, or women, and was terrified that if he didn't go about this in way that he thought guaranteed him secrecy and discretion, and was willing to pay up to get that, that he would get caught and ruined, and it was the very act of trying to conceal the transactions that ended up tripping him up, but they were a testament to how hard he was trying not to get caught.
KRAUTHAMMER: It's true. But where a psychiatrist steps in is where the actions are clearly irrational. You can't do this ultimately --
HUME: They're dangerous, but I don't think they were irrational.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}KRAUTHAMMER: But look what the consequences are. If you do any cost benefit analysis -- any economist who looks at this; economists speak of rational and psychiatrists speak of irrational.
HUME: What is worth noting, though is that the hookers weren't the ones who outed him.
BARNES: That was one of the reasons why it was so reckless. Even if you would pay the money through some shell corporation, and that was supposed to hide it, what is to stop one of these hookers, as ones have in the past, going to the "National Enquirer," some magazine or something, and make money by exposing?
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}HUME: That's why you get the most expensive ones. We got to go, here.
KONDRACKE: Yes, then it's he said she said. Without proof, it's he said, she said. But it is perfectly self destructive behavior.
HUME: It certainly ended up that way.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}When we come back, the issue of race in this campaign -- more on that next.
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}SEN. HILLARY CLINTON, (D) NEW YORK: Obviously, it's exciting, and historical to have an African-American and a woman running. But both of us have said we're not asking people to support us because of race or gender. We're asking people to support us because of the case each of us makes to voters.
SEN. BARACK OBAMA, (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Senator Clinton and others accuse me of being naive. But I'm not naive enough to think we're going to solve the country's racial problems or some of these other divisions in the span of six months or a year.
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}HUME: The issue continues to rise, that being the issue of race. And Bill Clinton, of course, as Hillary Clinton was apologizing for last night, raised it about Barack Obama unmistakably in South Carolina. She said he meant no harm.
But the question arises here -- what about this issue? What about the Clintons? What about the Obama camp? Is Obama capitalizing and at the same time accusing Hillary Clinton of playing a race card against him?
KONDRACKE: Look, I think there is no question that the Clinton campaign has played the race card. It doesn't make them racists, but -- what Barack Obama was trying to do was have it both ways, if you like. He was trying transcend race; at the same time he could fully have expected that he was going to get the support of African-Americans.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}But you would hope that the white people, at least, in the country would be able to look at this guy as a kind of a post-racial person. But the Clinton campaign knew that there were these racists out there, and what they did was they polarized the race. They disallowed among a lot of white people Obama from being Tiger Woods.
BARNES: They had to tell these people "By the way, in case you hadn't noticed, he's an African-American"?
Mort, that's nonsense. And besides -- go back to the Geraldine Ferraro comment, where she said you wouldn't have gotten in this position, leading in the Democratic race, were he not an African-American.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}I think that's true on its face, but if it's some conspiracy by the Clinton campaign, why would she be saying this to some paper you never heard of in California, and then it becomes a big issue?
Obviously she wasn't a part of this Clinton campaign conspiracy that has been dreamed up by Mort and a lot of others saying -- look, there are some things -- you should be able to comment about race. You should be able to comment that, as Mort said, African-Americans are lopsidedly in favor of Barack Obama because he's an African-American. I would be, too, if I were voting.
He is the first one to have a chance of to be president. He represents this idea of post-racial future, which Jesse Jackson didn't because he was just a grievance candidate.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}And part of his appeal is the fact that to a lot of people that he is an African-American. Why can't you say that?
KRAUTHAMMER: I know it's wrong with the Ferraro comment was that she implying that for Obama race is a plus and for Hillary gender is a negative, which is not so. If she had been the wife of the President of the United States, she would not be where she is now.
HUME: And some of the passion of her supporters goes to the fact that she is the first women to get this far.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}KRAUTHAMMER: It is not an accident that she carries the women's vote, and particularly women of a certain age; her age.
But with Obama, I think it's more complicated. Yes, I think he does benefit, but not in a way that is implied in her statement -- affirmative action, getting a pass.
I think it's that because he transcends race, he excites people. He talks about transcending all our other divisions, and it's credible because in himself, being African-American, he shows it can be done on the racial issue in a way that a white candidate never could.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}So he has that advantage. And being in a sense of post-racial gives him that advantage, so that --
KONDRACKE: The issue of his pastor and his pastor's black nationalism and racial hatred, you could argue, raises questions about whether Barack Obama indeed is post-racial.
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