McVeigh Execution Draws Near; Will Europeans Warm to Bush Agenda?
JAKE TAPPER, HOST: Good evening. See the fight last night? The daughters of Ali and Frazier duking it out. Well, we've got three women here ready to get scrappy, too, so join us and TAKE 5 with Tamala Edwards, "TIME" magazine staff writer; Danielle Crittenden, and author of a serialized novel on opinionjournal.com; our regular panelist Robert George of "The New York Post" and my brilliant co- host, Michelle Cottle of "The New Republic." I'm Jake Tapper from salon.com. Bon voyage, Mr. President: Can Bush charm angry Europeans next week? And a Los Angeles jury awards $3 billion to a 40 year Marlboro man. And our Takes. These and other hot smoking issues all just ahead.</s>MICHELLE COTTLE, CO-HOST: But first, the McVeigh countdown ticks toward Monday morning. With images of the Oklahoma City bombing burned into the national memory, sympathy is scarce for the bomber. But while Monday's execution ends McVeigh's drama, it's unlikely to end debate over a moratorium on the death penalty, especially after the release of controversial Justice Department research that found no racial bias in federal executions.</s>JOHN ASHCROFT, ATTORNEY GENERAL: I think there is no reason for us to have a moratorium in the federal system on the death penalty, and the judgments we have reached in the studies affirm that.</s>COTTLE: So, Tam, do you buy the findings?</s>TAMALA EDWARDS, "TIME" MAGAZINE: No, I don't. Here's why. I think Ashcroft made a good point. A lot of these guys did horrible things, they were prosecuted the way they should be and they happen to be minorities. But two problems. They looked at federal cases of people getting the death penalty. By far, the larger pool are people who get it in the states, and they didn't really compare. Are they taking people who have been prosecuted for distributing drug, are they prosecuting people who smuggle drugs, when tend to be white as much as they do people who tend to be black. It's the old, if you get caught with crack, are you prosecuted as much as if you get caught with cocaine. The answer is no.</s>ROBERT GEORGE, "THE NEW YORK POST": Tam, I hate to tell you this, but in a sense, there is no bias in federal executions...</s>EDWARDS: How can you go on this report?</s>GEORGE: ... because there has been no executions in 40 years at the federal level. The fact is many of the people who are on death row have been involved in gang activity, which as anybody who lives in L.A. can tell you, unfortunately, there's a preponderance of black gangs, of Latino gangs and so forth...</s>EDWARDS: There are also white people who do crack.</s>GEORGE: It's not surprising that you are going to have an oversampling of gangs -- drug kingpins on death row.</s>DANIELLE CRITTENDEN, OPINIONJOURNAL.COM: But Robert is right in that more people killed by lightning every year than receive the death penalty any where in the states. But we don't punish people according to the percentage that they are in the population, we punish them according to the crimes they commit. And yes, it's true that blacks are 13 percent of the population, but they commit more than half of the most violence crimes.</s>COTTLE: But there is a disturbing point in the report that hasn't gotten a lot of attention that they do a lot more plea bargaining with white offenders, apparently, and I think Ashcroft called it a statistical disparity, or something like this, but this statistical disparity then winds up with 14 of the 20 people on death row being black.</s>TAPPER: Robert, do you really think that a white person and black person for the same crime get the same justice in America? Do you really think that?</s>GEORGE: Generally speaking, yes.</s>TAPPER: You really do?</s>GEORGE: Yes.</s>CRITTENDEN: We're talking, too, about the death penalty, and the death penalty is not given away lightly, as it were, and to say that they are going to compare somebody who is on death row to somebody who is caught with cocaine smuggling, those are just completely different cases</s>TAPPER: But the death penalty is just one American policy that infuriates many Europeans, who are now preparing to greet President Bush next week. It's his first-ever presidential trip to Europe. He'll shoot the bull in Spain, flex his muscles in Brussels at NATO HQ, chew the fat in Sweden with European big fish, avoid making Polish jokes in Warsaw and we hope he'll be "Putin" the Russian president in a friendly mood at a stop in Slovenia. The question, of course: Can he smooth over opposition to U.S. policies on missile defense, climate change, and the rest of the heavy baggage he's packing. Robert, that's a tall order for this president. Do you think he can do it?</s>GEORGE: Around the world in 6 days with George W. Bush. You know, I think he can. It's going to be difficult because what he is going to have to convince the Europeans of is that he wants to, in as sense, move America out of these kind of binding, this kind of multilateral commitments that Clinton put the country into which, considering both our economic and military strength and so forth, is frankly inappropriate and he is pushing the country more in a unilateral mode, and he has to sell the Europeans on that.</s>COTTLE: But he's starting out on a bad foot even before he goes. I mean, he told the European Union officials that he was going to cut down the number of times they meet. They only meet twice a year. This is not getting him off on the right foot.</s>GEORGE: Has anything actually seriously come out of these meetings?</s>COTTLE: But that's not the point. The point is he's politically tone deaf on this and he knows he's got to be careful.</s>CRITTENDEN: What I don't understands is why we're deciding that our foreign policy is bad if the Europeans don't like it.</s>TAPPER: It's more of a question of our foreign policy toward the Europeans being bad. Now, listen, I have say, it's a bad wrap to blame the Kyoto thing on him. That thing couldn't get through the Senate, and European countries have yet to ratify that. That's not a fair charge against him, but he promised a foreign policy of humility and that is the exact opposite of his foreign policy.</s>CRITTENDEN: But we can't rely on Europe to be humble, and I think what he's going...</s>CRITTENDEN: But the Europeans, this is not about what Bush or America does, this is about what America is. They resent it that it's powerful, that it's rich.</s>COTTLE: I'm going to have to cut this off, but we have to go. From the Republican White House to the newly Democratic Senate, you couldn't miss Tom Daschle this week. The son of South Dakota wins the TAKE 5 "Employee of the Week" award for striking a note of bipartisanship at the end of a rancorous three weeks. Robert, what do you think? Is it all downhill for Daschle from here for Daschle?</s>GEORGE: Gag me with a spoon. Everybody come in promising -- Clinton bipartisan, Bush change the tone. It usually lasts for five minutes.</s>TAPPER: But then we have Lott declaring war on the Democratic Party, as he did yesterday, you have to at least say that Daschle put -- maybe you don't buy it, but it has been an affable and bipartisan phase.</s>CRITTENDEN: It's so different from Gephardt.</s>GEORGE: If Trent Lott has declared war on the Democratic Party a year ago or something, I think conservatives would have been a lot happier. It's a little bit too late now.</s>CRITTENDEN: The Democrats declare war every week against the Republicans.</s>EDWARDS: I think Tom Daschle is know for being a sweet, reserved, laid-back guy compared to many of his colleagues, but I think the nature of this Senate, by next week, there'll be fighting anyway. It doesn't matter how nice a guy he is.</s>COTTLE: Tam, coming up, we're going to have the embarrassment of riches in the Bush Cabinet; playground teasing or dangerous behavior, kids and sexual harassment; plus our takes, all just ahead.