News anchor speaks

To a packed house of students and faculty Monday, ABC news anchor and reporter Cokie Roberts and her husband shared comments on the political situation in Washington and a life of reporting the news.\nThe Center on Congress sponsored the lecture by Cokie and Steve Roberts -- also a Washington journalist -- in Alumni Hall of the Indiana Memorial Union.\nFormer Indiana Congressman Lee Hamilton, also the director of The Center on Congress, introduced the couple with an anecdote about how the Roberts family isn't typical. Both Cokie's parents served in Congress. And her mother is just wrapping up another influential post. \n"Her job, as ambassador to the Vatican, was to represent Bill Clinton to the Pope," Cokie said. "This is not an easy job. They were together so much, and there were so many pictures of them taken together that when they were showed to children, they would say, 'There's the Pope and there's the Pope's wife."\nSteve added, "My mother-in-law is known as the Pope's wife," he said. "It isn't your typical journalistic experience."\nBoth journalists cover top political stories in Washington. With one troubled presidency over and a controversial election ending in a virtually tied election, Cokie offered her thoughts on the atmosphere in Washington. \n"We had this moment of hope that it was possible that Bill Clinton was actually leaving town." Cokie said. "We have given up on that and he is clearly here to stay. So he will stay as a shadow over George Bush and the Democratic Party."\nOn the flip side, Cokie said she feels sorry for Al Gore as he has to walk away from Washington. \n"Poor Al Gore," Cokie said. "I've known him my whole life. He was the best boy his whole life. Always the same, I mean boring. And he did everything right. He went to all the right schools, got good grades, married his high school sweetheart and stayed true to her. Then Gore got involved with Clinton and got blamed in some kind of a way. I kept thinking that through the whole thing that Gore was thinking, 'I could have had more fun in college. Bush had more fun in college.'" \nNow that Bush has been inaugurated, he will have to prove wrong his reputation as being a nonintellectual, Cokie said. Tonight, Bush will address a joint session of Congress and the entire country about current issues. \nCokie said Bush's highest priorities will be aimed at the people who didn't vote for him. She believes Bush has no choice but to cross party lines and get out from under the Democratic Party. He began to do this during the election, she explained. \n"Education. This was their highest priority issue because he wanted to appeal to women. And to some degree he wanted to appeal to African Americans," Cokie said. Unfortunately, when Bush tried to express these thoughts in a campaign he said, 'We want to provide a more literate and hopefuller country."\nSteve said he believes both Bush and Gore had been crossing party lines throughout the election. \n"In Washington, you're dealing with two separate forces," Steve said. "One set of forces is really pushing the two parties together to cooperate, and another set of forces is pulling them apart. Both sets of forces are present at the same time, sometimes in the same day. We had this remarkable experience during the campaign where we had one candidate running as a compassionate conservative and another as a pragmatic liberal. You tell me the difference between those two."\nThere wasn't much of a difference between the candidates, Steve said, causing both to campaign with each other's standpoints. Bush pushed education, a typically democratic issue, which he is still placing No. 1 on his list and Gore pushed deficit reduction, a classic Republican cause. \nRegardless of what was campaigned for during the election, Steve said he believes there is another underlying issue. During a poll taken after the election, Steve said, about 26 percent of Americans said they were strongly democratic. About 22 percent said they were strongly Republican. That means that 52 percent were somewhere in the middle. Steve feels that the new cabinet in Washington will have to govern appropriately.\n"This is not a revolutionary country. This is a modern, middle-of-the-road country. We like speed bumps in our politics," Steve said. "There are 'kitchen-table issues.' What do people really talk about around the kitchen table? They don't talk about Bosnia, and they don't talk about finance reform around the kitchen table. But they do talk about prices of prescription drugs. They do talk about their problems with HMOs. They do talk about their kid's school. They do talk about safety in their neighborhoods." \nSteve said he believes these are the power issues. These are the issues that will need to be addressed in a successful presidency. He reminded the audience of one thing to remember in politics:\n"There are only two slogans in politics," Steve said. "'You've never had it so good' or 'It's time for a change." \nCokie is now the ABC News chief congressional analyst, co-anchor of a morning show called, "This Week with Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts," and a news analyst for National Public Radio. Steve is host of his own television show called, "The Roberts Report," and a professor of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University. \nAs a married couple, they write a syndicated column that appears nationally in more than 500 newspapers and have co-written a book, "From This Day Forward," a testimonial about their own marriage, as well as other American marriages.\nThe couple answered a series of questions after the lecture and visited four different classes while on campus.