Transcript for February 19

MR. RUSSERT:  Mary Matalin, the last number in that Time magazine poll is the overall approval of the vice president, and here it is. Approve:  29 percent; disapprove 41 percent. A 29 percent approval rating. Will that hamper the vice president’s effectiveness in terms of governing, or helping fellow Republicans in the midterm elections?

MS. MATALIN:  Absolutely not. Why—I’ve heard this repeatedly for six years. He’s been the whipping boy for the liberals for six years and whenever he does go out on this show or he puts something on the top of his speech, he carries the day with his message, he broke during the campaign, he wins the debate, so no, it doesn’t diminish his effectiveness, nor has his role in any way been diminished at the White House.

I love this reference to blowing off the institutions of democracy like freedom of the press. There—this is—we are not engaged in a false debate, we all have the same goal, which is to communicate with the public, to inform the public. What we thought we were doing Sunday morning by having an eyewitness who was there, who was an expert on hunting, going to a paper that understands the culture, who had the capacity to get it up on the wire quickly, was communicating and informing the public in which the vice president took responsibility, apologized, spoke to the reporter, was corroborated by the sheriff and our office, the vice president’s office. I no longer work there. I don’t see how that’s violating the rules of the institution, the hallmarks of our democracy. We just didn’t go through them.

MR. RUSSERT:  Right.

MS. MATALIN:  Let me pose a question here. What if I called David, instead of Katherine calling the Corpus Christi Caller-Times and said, “I’m just going to talk to you.” I suppose David’s first reaction, or any of his colleagues would be, “No, let’s go through the process. Let’s call the pool. Let’s get everybody involved here.” No, I know that’s not true because I’ve done this with Cheney feeding frenzies before when he’s had to go in for routine heart checks. There’s no such thing as you just put out a statement. And if I ever did want to just give it to one guy—on occasion which I did so I had the time to walk through it—they would take it. They didn’t say, “Stop!  Let’s go through the process and get the whole pool there.” So it’s disingenuous. I’m not starting a false debate. We’re not undermining the hallmarks of the democratic institution, the freedom of the presss. But its much ado about nothing, or in the words of Harry Whittington, “What’s all the hoopla about?”

MR. GREGORY:  OK, but Mary, if that’s the case, first of all, you know, the vice president of the United States accidentally shot a man for the first time since Aaron Burr killed Alexander Hamilton. Much different circumstance, admittedly. And the vice president’s office doesn’t feel an obligation to disclose that to the American people directly. You do it through a ranch owner in Texas?  It just—it just strikes me as odd.

MS. MATALIN:  It strikes you as odd because you live in a parallel universe. It did not strike Americans as odd. Press were calling me saying, “The president—the vice president needs to apologize.” He did profusely and repeatedly to the victim of his accident, who was Harry Whittington.

MR. GREGORY:  If you thought he did everything right, why is it that you ultimately—if the vice president said, “I did everything right,” by disclosing it the way he did, why did you do a big national interview this week?

MS. MATALIN:  Because you went on a jihad, David. For four days you went on a Jihad.

MR. GREGORY:  And that’s an unfortunate use of that word, by the way. This is not what that was.

MS. MATALIN:  Oh, OK. All right. How—were you saving up for that line?

MS. DOWD:  Mary, it isn’t only the press. He blows off the FISA courts, he blows off the Geneva Conventions, he blows off the U.N. to go to Iraq. He wants to blow off everything. He’s got a fever of about presidential erosion just the way he had a fever about going into Iraq.

MR. GIGOT:  A hunting incident—the vice president can defend himself, but a hunting incident is a little different than the FISA court issue and the NSA.

MS. DOWD:  But it’s part of same pattern.

MR. GIGOT:  It is not—it’s—how about a little human empathy?  I mean, he shot his friend. He’s—it’s really one of these incidents where I think we can all stand back and say, “Let’s have a debate about the FISA Courts. Let’s have a big debate about the NSA wiretaps. Those are important issues.” This is a very different kind of circumstance.

MS. DOWD:  But then he shot his friend and blames his friend.

MR. RUSSERT:  Can I just pick up on that?  The Democrats were very, very outspoken, as you might expect. The front-runner for the Democratic nomination 2008, the senator from New York, Hillary Clinton, had a news conference, and this is what she offered.

(Videotape, February 14, 2006)

SEN. HILLARY CLINTON, (D-NY):  A tendency of this administration from the top all the way to the bottom is to withhold information, to resist legitimate requests for information, to refuse to be forthcoming about information that is of significance and relevant to the job that all of you do and the interest of the American people. The refusal of this administration to level with the American people on matters large and small is very disturbing.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT:  How do you respond?

MS. MATALIN:  Putting aside the delicious hypocrisy there, what a missed opportunity. What if Mrs. Clinton had come out and said, “Do you know, I’m not a hunter, but lived in Arkansas and I understand this is an accident. These sorts of accidents are not infrequent. I don’t agree with Dick Cheney on many things, as you know, but I do know Lynn and Dick Cheney and I have to believe like any human being that he must be feeling awful right now for shooting his friend. And most of all, I don’t know Harry Whittington, but there’s a man lying in a hospital bed and I think we should all pass our thoughts and prayers along to him. Now, I’d like to talk about the serious business of this nation, things that I do not agree with the vice president on.” Well, Maureen Dowd, the diva of the smart set would be swooning. Moms across the country would be saying, “Hey, she thinks like me. That’s right. A guy shoots his friend. That’s not relative to my life. Let’s move on to serious issues.” No, that was a politically stupid thing to do, beside the delicious and just absurd hypocrisy of the forthcomingness of an administration.

MR. GREGORY:  Tim, can I just speak up on a point that Paul made that I think is a good one, which is I think for the moment I’m the only one here representing the White House press corps. I think one of the things we may have missed this week is a little bit more empathy for the vice president, given what he went through. This is a terrible incident for two people, one of whom happened to be the vice president. I think we missed that a little bit in all of this questioning. I do think the vice president gave voice to that personal pain extremely well this week, which is why, I for one, was so pleased to see him speak publicly about it and, you know, why I think it would have been useful to speak about it more quickly.

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