ANNOUNCER:   There's thunder on the right. 
SEN. JOHN MCCAIN  , ARIZONA:   I don't think that this is over by a long shot. 
ANNOUNCER:   And thunder on the left. 
REP. RICHARD GEPHARDT  , MINORITY LEADER:   We need to fix the problem. 
ANNOUNCER:   And the thud you hear is Wall Street. Is someone feeling "loan-ly" at the top? Fasten your seat belts and don't try anything funny. The pilot may have a gun. 
UNIDENTIFIED MALE:   Our duty is to protect the passengers, our cargo, and to maintain control of the ship at all times. 
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE:   We are rushing to the security blanket of guns in the cockpit. That could do more harm than good. 
BEGALA:   We're going to kick a little right wing ass. 
ANNOUNCER:   And, should Paul Begala have his mouth washed out with soap, or be arrested? Watch your mouth, ahead on CROSSFIRE. From the George Washington University, Paul Begala and Robert Novak. 
NOVAK:   Welcome to CROSSFIRE. Tonight, the last line of defense against terrorist hijackers. Why would anybody be against it? Also, the limits of free speech. But first, I'll look at those unusual and interesting stories that you might not find anywhere but in our CROSSFIRE "Political Alert." A remarkable foursome plied Capitol Hill today. Cabinet Secretaries John Ashcroft, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul O'Neill and Colin Powell sat at the very same table to support formation of a new department of homeland security. Representative Dick Armey gets credit for arranging this photo-op. He persuaded Secretary O'Neill to delay an overseas trip and got Defense Secretary Rumsfeld to come, even though his hand is in a cast, following surgery this week. About a dozen House committees are working on bureaucratic chair shuffling. Armey's select committee eventually gets to put all the pieces together. Don't you just feel safer already? 
BEGALA:   I think it's good that they're trying to make this effort. It's a little late. I don't understand why security does not have the FBI and the CIA in it, though. I mean, homeland security, it's got the meat inspectors, but not the FBI. 
NOVAK:   Does it feel better to know that they're taking the Secret Service into Justice, instead of Homeland Security...    Well, never mind. 
BEGALA:   I think it's a good idea. Citing top Bush administration sources, "USA Today" reports that an invasion of Iraq by the United States will only occur if there is significant provocation, such as Saddam Hussein invading a neighbor or producing a nuclear weapon. Now, this is a significant policy shift from previous justifications, which included something about that guy really ticks me off, and Dad's getting tired of being teased about it at the country club.    Seeking to reassure conservatives, however, White House sources say attacking Saddam is still an option if the Bush-Cheney corporate scandals look like a big problem in the November elections. 
NOVAK:   I know you don't like this, but maybe they'll come to their good senses and say, gee, the world's not going to come to an end if this guy stays up there tormenting the Iraqis. 
BEGALA:   It is an interesting piece of reporting. 
NOVAK:   Yes. A veteran Democratic Congressman, John Conyers from Detroit, never is short of goofy schemes. Now he wants the senior Democrat in all of Congress, his fellow Michiganer, John Dingell, to drop out of the August 6th primaries. Dingell is running against Congresswoman Lynn Rivers because of redistricting. Conyers wants Dingell to use his big war chest to elect Democrats, take control of the House, make Dick Gephardt speaker. And when Gephardt quits Congress to run for president, private citizen Dingell runs for speaker. Folks, it won't happen. Besides, John Dingell is one of the last of the good ol' boys left in the Democratic Party. Hang in there, John. 
BEGALA:   I'm with you. I love John Dingell. Great American, great Democrat. But if a private citizen should be speaker, Bill Clinton. He's available. 
NOVAK:   How about Paul Begala? 
BEGALA:   Speaker Clinton. Most of us know, of course, the story of John F. Kennedy and the PT-109. Back in World War II, 1943, the 26-year-old Navy lieutenant's patrol boat was rammed by a Japanese soldier. Two American soldiers died. Kennedy's heroism saved all the rest of the crew. And this week we got a ghostly look at what's left. Robert Ballard, who also discovered the wreck of the Titanic, released pictures of what Naval historians say is almost certainly the wreckage from PT-109. It was discovered earlier this year. Ballard's new assignment will be a little tougher: finding proof that another future president, George W. Bush, ever reported for duty during 1972 and '73, when he was supposed to be in the Air National Guard. Of course, all available records show he never showed up. 
NOVAK:   You got your GW blast in early. You know, Lieutenant Kennedy was one of the few officers who ever, on the basis of a blundered assignment, became a hero. That shows you what a good PR man will do. 
BEGALA:   He was a great American hero and a great American president.  
NOVAK:   While it's news when private corporations go bust, it's old hat for publicly-owned companies to go deep into the red. I'm talking Amtrak. Its president told Congress this week that for the second straight year, Amtrak will lose $1 billion. That's billion with a B. Why does the railroad lose so much money? Senator John McCain has got this one right. Instead of concentrating on service in highly-populated corridors, as a private company would, Amtrak runs service in sparsely settled areas. The members of Congress insist on it. That's how socialism works, doesn't it? 
BEGALA:   Amtrak is a great service to America, particularly in rural areas. They deserve representation. They deserve Amtrak. 
NOVAK:   They don't deserve us paying for their luxury train tickets. 
BEGALA:   They're not luxurious. We need Amtrak. Remember the so-called debt clock? The digital counter that sat in Times Square for years as the national debt skyrocketed during the Reagan-Bush deficits? Well, guess what. It's back. Not even two years after President Clinton balanced the budget, gave us the largest surplus in history and put America on a path to zero national debt, President Bush's fiscal policies have the debt clocks zooming once again. Said Bush, our first MBA president, "I always told you I was going to run the country like a business. I just didn't tell you that business was WorldCom." 
NOVAK:   It's an interesting thing. We had a recession that Bill Clinton started. We had a terrorist attack. Those things didn't have anything to do with the deficit, did they? Of course not. 
BEGALA:   This is Bush's tax cut. 
NOVAK:   The White House today confirmed that back in the 1980s George W. Bush was loaned more than $180,000 from Harken Energy, a company he served as a director. Early this week, the president seemed to call for an end to such loans. But until now they have been commonplace. A White House spokesman reminded reporters that the Bush loans were completely appropriate and fully disclosed. Democrats are acting like they have stumbled on to another Whitewater, or even Watergate. First in the CROSSFIRE tonight, two members of Congress from New York, Democrat Nita Lowey and Republican Peter King. 
LOWEY:   How are you? 
KING:   Bob, how are you? 
BEGALA:   Thank you both for taking the time to join us. 
LOWEY:   A pleasure. 
BEGALA:   Congressman King, when I woke up this morning, here's what greeted me on my doorstep, the "Washington Post." Bush took oil firms' loans as director. Practice would be banned in president's new corporate abuse policy. Now, you're a Teddy Roosevelt reformer, as a Republican. This has got to bother you, that the leader of your party has this Harken hypocrisy, right? 
KING:   Well, first, I'm glad you woke up this morning. That's a step in the right direction. 
NOVAK:   Sometimes you can't tell. 
BEGALA:   I live in my dream world, but this is a nightmare, right? 
KING:   No. not at all. First of all, we're talking about something that happened years ago, which was totally proper in the context of the time it was. The fact is that conditions have changed since then. What could have been perfectly legal and appropriate and proper, 10, 12, 15 years ago, is not today. Because it's been abused by corporate officials today. President Bush certainly did not abuse anything at that time. But the fact is, because there's been so much abuse lately, I agree with the president. That practice should be stopped now. 
BEGALA:   I actually want to tell you more about that loan, as the "New York Times" reported it, because I don't think it was proper at all and I suspect you don't, either. Put up on the board, how the "New York Times" described how they struck this deal for Bush. It was not a loan like you and I would get. The "Times" says two years later, after the original loan, the arrangement was changed. No longer was Mr. Bush personally liable for repaying the loan. Mr. Bush's risk was limited to not profiting on the deal, since he could simply return the shares should they decline in value, for less than the loan amount. Now, Congressman, your constituents in New York can't get a loan that they don't have to repay if their investments go south. Why should George W. Bush? 
KING:   At that time it was common practice. It was not abused, to encourage direct participation, to get employees involved, as far as getting stock in the company. The loan was given basically to get stock in the company. That's the way it was done at that time. It was not abused. It was something which was done on a fairly regular basis. Now that it's being abused, it should be stopped. But if something happened years ago and was done properly, does not mean it was done improperly or the president did anything wrong. You guys are reaching. You can't help yourselves. Paul, you can't help yourselves. 
NOVAK:   Nita Lowey, I've always felt that many Democratic politicians are without shame. But I think you have a little shame, so I'm going to ask... 
LOWEY:   Want me to respond to that question? 
NOVAK:   No, I'm going to ask you to answer this question. We have a serious situation in this country right now. Because the investors are very worried the market is going down, partly because of the things you people are saying up there. And you are taking a loan the president of the United States took out, as a private citizen, before he even ran for governor. Aren't you a little ashamed of yourself, that when there are serious things afoot you are playing dirty politics? 
LOWEY:   Bob, to me this is about basic American values: honesty, hard work, integrity, fairness. Investors put their money in the market in the United States of America expecting that everything would be run in an orderly, fair, honest way. Every day we see another revelation. I think what the Congress has to do is to restore confidence again. Over 50 percent of Americans currently invest in the market. That's frightening. And this is why Social Security is so important. 
NOVAK:   You completely ignored my question. Totally ignored it. This -- since George W. Bush, he was then trying buy the Texas Rangers, took out this loan, we've been through about three business cycles. You're not going to tell the American people that his loan had anything to do with what's going on there. Can you answer that question? 
LOWEY:   Let me tell you what I believe. I think, from the administration to the CEOs, to the investors, to the Congress, we have a responsibility to restore confidence. And if it means... 
NOVAK:   You want to answer my question? 
LOWEY:   I will. I think the administration should let all of the information out and have it all reviewed and put it in back of them and let's move on. 
NOVAK:   Answer my question.  
LOWEY:   I did answer them.    I really believe that the administration has a responsibility to get all of the administration out. I strongly support the Sarbanes bill, the Leahy, McCain bill, that passed in a bipartisan way in the Senate. And I would hope that the House would support it as well. 
BEGALA:   It has everything, of course, to do with the current crisis. Because if the president has been tainted, as we know he has, by his own corporate scandals, he's ill-suited to lead us to resolve our current corporate scandals. Let me show you an exchange that happened at a press conference a few days ago. A reporter from "The Washington Post" asked him a very simply question about his role in what the SEC -- even under his daddy -- ruled was a phony transaction. Here's the question. Watch Bush's response. 
QUESTION:   Let me ask you, right before the accounting, the sale itself of this subsidiary, did you favor that? Were you involved? 
BUSH:   You need to look back on the director's minutes. 
BEGALA:   Well, Bush says look at the director's minutes. Mike Allen, who asked that question, reporter from "The Washington Post," asked the White House for those minutes. No. Then they said, we don't have them. He went to Harken Energy. Harken Energy says, well, we don't release any of those records ever since 1994, since Bush got into politics. They're hiding something. They're stonewalling. Shouldn't they come clean? 
KING:   First of all, Paul, there is no corporate scandal. The president has been tainted with nothing. The SEC fully investigated this and found nothing. The SEC, when President Clinton was president, put out the letter in 1993 saying there was nothing there. The fact is, this has been brought up in every campaign. It's been   by the SEC. And you keep calling it a scandal. I agree with Nita Lowey. This is a crisis that we face in the American economy today. We have to address it. We want to address the issue. You people want to attack the president. And you're reaching. You're grasping. And if the race is about -- if this is about the integrity of the president, the American people have faith in this president. And politically, it's good for us that you attack the president. 
NOVAK:   We almost have to take a break. But I think we have to take off your mask. You are the chairman of the famous and feared DCCC. People out there might not know what it is. It's the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which has caused as much havoc as the Communist Party in this country. But... 
LOWEY:   Oh! Oh. 
NOVAK:   Oh, just kidding. Just kidding. I want to review -- you want to elect a Democratic Congress. I want to give you some bad news. The CNN-"USA Today"-Gallup poll: Who is partially responsible for the business scandals? George W. Bush? Strongly agree, 15 percent. You can look at that, Nita. Moderately agree, 31 percent. And then we asked, Bill Clinton, who is responsible for these business scandals? Strongly agree, 26 percent, moderately agree, 25 percent. The people think that if anybody had something to do with this, it's Bill Clinton, not George Bush. 
LOWEY:   Well, the polls that I'm looking at, Bob Novak, say that 60 percent of the people believe that Democrats are fighting for them, that Democrats are on their side, the side of the small investor, the side that wants to see honesty, fairness, integrity in the markets. But understands that for our economy to get moving again -- and remember, the markets are at a five-year low right now -- and it's in all of our interest to get the economy moving again; to see fairness so we can create jobs for the small investor. 
NOVAK:   I'll take the Gallup poll over the Democrats. 
BEGALA:   That's what we'll talk about after the break, so hold that thought, Nita. You, too. We want to know how you guys are going to jump-start the economy, Congressman King. When we come back, Bob and I are going to ask our guests how much more damage that Dubya can do to the economy. And later, the dangers of the colorful language some of us use. In some places, apparently they throw you out of the ball game. And then, our quote of the day. You're not going to believe who is agreeing with Dan Quayle.
