Transcript for February 19

MR. GIGOT:  This is—I think this whole issue is an illustration of so many of our debates—every debate for that matter in Washington goes immediately to DEFCON 1, where both sides square off and it’s bad faith on this side, bad faith on that side. You know, sometimes people make mistakes, human mistakes. And this is one of those cases where I think we ought to treat it in human terms.

MS. DOWD:  But I think reporters would have had a lot of empathy for the vice president if he hadn’t sent people out for four days to blame the victim. I mean, you know, I went hunting with Reagan and Bush Sr. and I’ve been on all these Republican hunting trips, and—but I’ve learned a lot about hunting this week. And the thing I’ve learned is that the shooter bears total responsibility for where everyone in the party is before he shoots, and they shoot abreast, not while someone’s fetching a duck. So for him to send all these people out to blame this guy for so many days was not appropriate.

MR. GREGORY:  I just wonder what Mary Matalin and others would have said if Vice President Gore had accidentally shot someone with similar facts and the press corps was pressing hard for answers and if Mary or others wouldn’t think we would press just as hard for answers in that circumstance with this kind of story, I think that’s mistaken.

MS. MATALIN:  I don’t know what answers you pressed for that weren’t contained in this story. And you want to know why there’s bad faith because this human accident, this tragedy is conveyed as “Vice president”—she just characterized it—“The vice president sent people out for four days to blame the victim.” No such thing occurred. In the first story it was clear from his spokesman and Katharine Armstrong that he took responsibility and he was apologetic. He did not send anybody out to take the blame. I’ve explained how these stories go from putting out facts to issuing denials. He wasn’t out—he wasn’t out—and he wasn’t not out for four days. If you go through those four days, the first day the story was out there in as complete a fashion as we could humanly do.

MR. RUSSERT:  If Katharine Armstrong had not said, “We can’t contain this story,” is there a possibility that it would not have come out for...

MS. MATALIN:  Absolutely, completely no. He called me—I talked to him, what, at 7 o’clock his time, it’s Sunday morning, the—and we made a judgment call at that point, because I had three calls preceding my conversation with him, which ranged from, “It’s a skin wound” to “Oh, he can still see.” I said, “We don’t have a coherent set of facts here.” And one thing we know about the press corps is if you put out evolving sets of facts while you’re collecting information, those bad facts are worse than no facts whatsoever. So I’m agreeing that we should all get from—at least not def-con one, so we move back to def-con five in these things?  And could we not characterize this as he’s blowing off the hallmarks of a democratic in—all the hallmarks of a democratic institution?

MR. RUSSERT:  The president went and had a town meeting discussion, and one of the questions raised by one of the participants was:  “We’re all talking about vi—the media’s all talking about Vice President Cheney. What about Vice President Gore, Mr. President?  He went to Saudi Arabia and he said that there had been terrible abuses against Arabs, that they had been indiscriminately rounded up, and he criticized the visa program between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.” And that was being pushed very aggressively by some of the conservative blogs:  Focus on Al Gore, not Dick Cheney.

MR. GIGOT:  Well, I mean, the remarks were notable. I mean, I think, because when you go to a foreign country like that, particularly the heart of Wahabi Islam, and say, “We have indiscriminately rounded up Arabs in this country after 9/11.” First of all, I don’t think that’s true, I don’t remember us doing that. In fact, I think the reaction in America after 9/11 was quite gracious and understanding in trying to distinguish between terrorists and moderate Islams. So for him to go there and say that, I think it’s a real story.

MR. RUSSERT:  Before we go, Maureen Dowd, take 15 seconds, what’s the most important thing we learned this week in covering this story?

MS. DOWD:  Well, I do think, you know, I appreciate the vice president’s attempts to put on a sweet pink tie and, you know, to tell Wyoming about, you know, his lust as a newlywed. But I think Mary had a very difficult job humanizing Dick Cheney, because I don’t think he has given us much chance to see him as a human being.

MR. RUSSERT:  David Gregory:

MR. GREGORY:  I think it’s important to always try to turn the temperature down, as Mary suggests, but I do think there’s a tension between the White House press corps and the administration, and I don’t think that that should be demonized as a political disagreement. It’s, in some ways, healthy, and it’s a reality.

MR. RUSSERT:  Paul Gigot:

MR. GIGOT:  Well, I think—well, let’s make some distinctions between stories that really matter, and we ought to fight and fight hard about it and—where secrecy is an issue, and let’s distinguish between those and what are really human accidents.

MR. RUSSERT:  Mary Matalin:

MS. MATALIN:  You know, in the average American, in the parallel universe, it’s not about us, it’s not about President Bush, it’s not about Dick Cheney, it’s about them, and they would like us all to focus on what are we doing for them?  Well, let’s have debate on policies and let’s distinguish political events of no consequence to the nation from those that are.

MR. RUSSERT:  To be continued. Mary Matalin, David Gregory, Paul Gigot, Maureen Dowd. We’ll be right back.

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