AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Time now for our review of the week in politics with our Friday political commentators, E J Dionne of The Washington Post and Brookings Institution. Hey there, E J.
E.J. DIONNE, BYLINE: Good to be with ya.
CORNISH: And filling in for David Brooks - Ramesh Ponnuru with the National Review. Hey there, Ramesh.
RAMESH PONNURU: Hi.
CORNISH: So are you a flutter as well over Tom Cotton? - a lot of glowing reviews there.
PONNURU: Well, I don't know if President Cotton is going to be in our future in 2017, although I suppose he's been elected to office as many times as Hillary Clinton has been. I do think that the response to his letter this week on Iran has been sort of hysterical on the left. If you step back and think about it, nothing that was in that letter is untrue. In fact, the administration - the Secretary of State John Kerry doesn't even contest that it's true. As a matter of constitutional law, any agreement that's not submitted to Congress with Iran is not going to be binding on the next president, is not going to be binding on the next Congress.
CORNISH: Here's the thing, I want to play actually some reaction for Senator Rand Paul at the Foreign Relations Committee hearing talking to Secretary of State John Kerry, saying he signed the letter, essentially, as a message and not just to Iran.
(SOUNDBITE OF HEARING)
SENATOR RAND PAUL: So why do I sign this letter? I sign this letter because I assign it to an administration that doesn't listen, to an administration that every turn tries to go around Congress because you think you can't get your way.
CORNISH: And Arizona Republican Jeff Flake, who spoke on our show to Melissa Block about this decision not to sign it.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
SENATOR JEFF FLAKE: Negotiations are tough enough here, and I didn't think it was appropriate to add another element that makes them more difficult.
CORNISH: E J, was this at least effective in drawing some attention to Iran policy? I mean, obviously not all Democrats - right? - are completely on board with where the White House is going with these negotiations.
DIONNE: I think we had plenty of attention on Iran policy that John Boehner invited Bibi Netanyahu to give a speech to the House, so I don't think...
CORNISH: Oh, that did it for you.
DIONNE: They didn't - we didn't need this. And, you know, Ramesh mentioned criticism from the left. It's not just criticism from the left. Jeff Flake's comments there. Senator Corker - Bob Corker of Tennessee, who's chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, and my Washington Post colleague Mike Gerson, who is a conservative, who is much less sympathetic to what may come out of this deal than I am, wrote in The Post, (reading) this was a foreign-policy maneuver, in the middle of a high-stakes negotiation, with all the gravity and deliberation of a blog posting. In timing, tone and substance, it raises questions about the Republican majority's capacity to govern. And Mike makes the point in his piece that if we are going to impose sanctions if a deal doesn't work out, we're going to need the Europeans and others around the world. And they're going to question whether the U.S. negotiated in good faith. So I think this made us look silly. It was a bad maneuver and it's going to backfire because Democrats who might have allied with the Republicans on this are pulling back and saying we don't want any part of this 47 percent of the Senate, if I may put it that way.
CORNISH: Ramesh, just to pull one more thing from that Gerson column, he said, why didn't Republicans make this case directly to the American people? Why do it in this manner? Your thoughts?
PONNURU: Well, I think that essentially that is what they're doing. They've done this in a way to get more attention for it, which they're obviously getting and thus bringing the case to the American people.
CORNISH: But it's addressed to Tehran, right?
PONNURU: But it is - yes, it is addressed - yes, that's right. That's right. And that was what was attention-getting about it. And look, I think that it is questionable as a tactic for a lot of reasons, some of them raised by Mike Gerson. But I do think that the calls for prosecuting Senator Cotton under the Logan Act, which we've seen from some Democratic consultants, Congressman Jared Polis calling him Tehran Tom - that's the sort of thing I have in mind when I suggest that the pushback has been a little bit hysterical.
CORNISH: All right.
DIONNE: Never heard those things from Republicans during the Iraq War years, but anyway, we'll let it go.
PONNURU: And that was - you know, some of that was hysterical as well. But that's the - the funny thing is the way that both parties trade sides on this. Democrats during the Reagan years were constantly trying to undermine the Reagan administration's foreign-policy. Republicans were saying that was illegitimate. Democrats were saying it was perfectly fine. The parties have switched sides on these sorts of issues.
DIONNE: Well, I'm not saying any of those things. I'm just quoting Mike Gerson (laughter).
CORNISH: All right, I want to turn very quickly to one more story.
(SOUNDBITE OF PRESS CONFERENCE)
HILLARY CLINTON: All set?
CORNISH: That's Hillary Clinton kicking off the start of a press conference where she addressed, among other things, the controversy over the use of her personal and private email systems while secretary of state. Now, Ramesh, last week you said that, you know, her team had six months to prepare for this story potentially coming out and that the comments you heard last week from her surrogates weren't persuasive in your mind. Did you get persuaded by Clinton herself this week?
PONNURU: I think she made a very strong case for trusting her if you already trusted her. But if you came in distrusting her or being agnostic on the question, I don't think she made a very strong case because basically all she was saying was, I've done the appropriate things, take my word on it.
CORNISH: E J, you wrote about this being an early skirmish in what will be one of the defining battles of her quest for the White House. What's that battle to you?
DIONNE: The battle is about how we remember the 1990s. And Republicans want everybody to remember about what the meaning of is is and all the political circus and scandals and all that. And Democrats, and particularly Hillary Clinton, want Americans to remember peace, prosperity, a time when incomes and all groups were rising. And so you're going to see a lot of stuff like this from the Republicans. I think there's a lesson to her in this. First of all, she did take too long to respond to this. And I think you're seeing in the papers a lot of Democrats, including some people who seem to be advising Clinton - although you never know with these blind quotes - saying she should have come out earlier; she doesn't have a campaign running. But I also think she needs to sort of reconsider a relationship with the press. Yes, she is absolutely right to have a certain paranoia. There are people out there to get her and will say anything. But she also needs to sort of accept that some of the inquiries of the press are going to be legitimate and they'll go to other presidential candidates. And I hope she learns how to deal with these things from this experience.
CORNISH: Ramesh, last word to you on this.
PONNURU: Well, I think the paranoia and secretiveness is what got her into this problem in the first place. That's why she probably had that private server.
CORNISH: A lot of people are doing that now - right? - though, so...
DIONNE: Well, I think there is going to be an interesting debate now. We're going to have to look at every candidate's email practices. What did they put out? What were the rules that they operated under? - because an awful lot of politicians have private servers.
PONNURU: Not all of them secretary of state.
DIONNE: That's true.
CORNISH: Given what I know about journalists and their ability to deal with email, this is going to be a fun story to watch. E J Dionne of The Washington Post and Brookings Institution. Thanks so much.
DIONNE: Good to be with ya.
CORNISH: And Ramesh Ponnuru with the National Review. Thank you so much.
PONNURU: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.