ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And now, our two regular political observers, columnists David Brooks of the New York Times, who is still in Des Moines, Iowa, and E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post, who earlier this week beat the crowds to New Hampshire. And he's still in Manchester. Welcome to both of you.
Mr. DAVID BROOKS (Columnist, The New York Times): Thank you.
SIEGEL: David, you wrote a column for today's New York Times in which you described the victories of Huckabee and Obama in Iowa as two political earthquakes. You see implications of real political change in those results, yes?
Mr. BROOKS: Certainly. I mean, the Obama victory was — it's not like John Kerry winning. It's not like Al Gore winning. It was an emotional victory. I see people all around here today who were emotionally moved by the victory, emotionally moved by his speech. We've got an African-American man on the juggernaut to the White House. I find it very hard to see how Hillary Clinton is going to stand in the way of that. How do you attack that? People were tremendously moved, and I think it's going to carry on to New Hampshire. New Hampshire's a state with a lot of independents, a lot of highly-educated voters.
That's bread and butter for Barack Obama. And so this is, this is just a huge victory that puts them on a tremendous course of momentum no matter how independent the New Hampshirites claim to be.
SIEGEL: And the tremors from Huckabee's win in the Republican caucus?
Mr. BROOKS: Well, the big story there is that the Republican party is in a state of transformation. We have the old Republican establishment. And Mike Huckabee is not part of it. And he took it on. He took on Rush Limbaugh, he took on free market groups like the Club For Growth. They hit him with everything they had, and he came out standing. It shows how weak the Republican establishment has become. And he did it, in part, for this old-fashioned social issue. But the big thing is the way he mixes the social issues with the economic issues.
If you're a middle class person making $45,000 a year out here, you have a lot to fear, not only from wage stagnation but also from divorce and single-parenthood. And what he did was he mixed the values and the economics into one story. And that's how people actually lived. And that's something Republicans, with talks of tax cuts and capital gains, haven't done. And that's why he appealed much more directly to real life than Mitt Romney, for example.
SIEGEL: E.J., what do you think of, of these words David is using? Earthquakes, an Obama juggernaut toward the White House?
Mr. E.J. DIONNE (Columnist, The Washington Post): Well, the headline on my column this morning was "A Whiff of Revolution," so it's only a matter of which metaphor we use, because I utterly agree…
SIEGEL: Some would say you might be a little extravagant, too, here today.
Mr. DIONNE: I agree with David on almost everything he said. The only thing I would say is the transformation of the Republican Party may also involve a nervous breakdown, which I think is what is going on. These two candidates, Huckabee and Obama, are both, in their way, preachers who say very interesting things. And that's, sometimes, unusual in politics. Even if their lines(ph) are focus group, they sure don't sound that way. I was at an Obama rally this afternoon in Concord, and he said his opponents say he needs to be seasoned and stewed.
We need to boil all the hope out of him so he's like us and he'll be ready to lead our country. He has really cast himself as both the generational change agent, and I think that's a huge story out of Iowa. He grew a generational line across that state and overwhelmed his opponents among the under 30s who voted in large numbers, contrary to what everyone always says about young people. And also, he did next best in the next youngest group. Huckabee, when he talks about the right to life, he quickly moves from abortion to talk about the equal dignity of human beings: rich and poor, black and white.
It's a very different kind of discourse than you've heard from many evangelical conservative. But I do think it speaks to where evangelicals are and that the old leaders of that movement, I think, are significantly out of touch with where their people are. They didn't endorsed Huckabee, but their people in Iowa went with him.
SIEGEL: Well, obviously the candidate selection process has just begun. But from what, from what you can see now, you saw in the caucuses in Iowa, if you were pressed to say what the election of 2008 is actually about, to the extent that if somebody can express that thing, they're most likely to. And David Brooks, what is this year about right now?
Mr. BROOKS: I'd say two things. First, the crisis of authority. People have lost faith in the government of the country and the whole ruling class of the country. And different campaigns had, had ways to go at that issue. John Edwards with his attack on corporations. Obama with the political system is broken. Huckabee with his attack on Wall Street, K-Street and the Republican establishment. John McCain with his attack on the dishonorable way government is being run.
But that is a theme, the crisis of authority. And then the second big crisis is middle class anxiety, wage stagnations, fear of losing their health insurance. All that stuff is pulled into one thing. And again, all the candidates who have succeeded somehow talked about that issue too.
SIEGEL: E.J., what's it all about, the way you see it?
Mr. DIONNE: What David said, and therefore, change, change and change some more. It's 1992 on steroids or it's the 1960 campaign for a new, diverse country which is in a much worse shape than Americans felt their country was in, in 1960. And what's notable about the democratic side is that they were all imitating each other to some degree. Obama had to change word. Hillary Clinton started using it. John Edwards had this dose of populism aimed at that middle class anxiety that David spoke about. Obama's made his speeches somewhat more populist. So is Hillary Clinton.
And of course, she even got grief when she went up and said, we're fired up and ready to go, which is a Barack Obama line. I think on the Democratic side, there is this kind of consensus and on the Republican side, there is great dissensus. They are all going in quite different directions. Romney is the candidate of the Reagan restoration, if you will. But that is way too backward looking. Huckabee is more forward looking. And McCain, oddly, the oldest candidate in the race is probably more forward looking than most of his opponents, which is why he, this morning, is in much better shape than almost anyone else out there.
SIEGEL: Well, both of you enjoy this ideal weekend for political journalists as you look ahead to Tuesday's New Hampshire primary. And thanks for talking with us once again, E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post and David Brooks of the New York Times.