Transcript for May 14

MR. HARWOOD: It tells you something about where the Bush presidency is right now when they argue with you and say, “No, that 31 percent in the CBS/New York Times poll was too low. We’re really in the mid-30s.” It’s a very, very difficult stretch for him, and it may not get better until something significant happens in Iraq, bringing 20, 30,000 troops home this fall. But they’re trying to fight through one step at a time. The tax cut bill getting through both chambers of Congress was a step forward this past week. And the president’s now playing hard on immigration with his speech on Monday night trying to give some cover to conservatives in his party to support this comprehensive bill with border security and a guest worker program. If they can get that, that would tell the American people that on a big problem, a very emotional problem that many people are concerned with, they’re at least taking some action.

MR. RUSSERT: The problem is when the president speaks on immigration, Judy, a lot of people in his own party aren’t going to agree.

MS. WOODRUFF: That’s right, Tim, division. The president—the White House needs a win badly right now. This is a rough, rough patch for them. It’s gone on a long time. They are dealing with conservatives in their own party, they’re dealing with others in the party, moderates, close to business. They’ve got to come up with something. They want to come up with something that’s going to satisfy both. But Tim, on the polls, Peter Hart, the Democratic pollster, reminds me that only Richard Nixon went this long under 40 percent. That’s how long George Bush has been in the 30s. I was in Mississippi this weekend, the reddest, perhaps, of the red states. Even there, Republican—granted it was Oxford—but granted, even there Republicans are disenchanted with this president.

Can he turn it around? Sure, second-term presidents have done that. Bill Clinton after Monica Lewinsky, Ronald Reagan after Iran-Contra. But those were one-issue problems. This is a president who has dealt with one crisis after another: Iraq, Katrina, the deficit, and it goes on and on. And it may be that there’s only one way he can turn it around, and that’s Iraq.

MR. RUSSERT: And here’s another issue that confronted him. That was the collecting of data on domestic phone calls. This is what the president had to say on Thursday.

(Videotape, May 11, 2006):

PRES. GEORGE W. BUSH: The privacy of ordinary Americans is fiercely protected in all our activities. We’re not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans. Our efforts are focused on links to al-Qaeda and their known affiliates. So far we’ve been very successful in preventing another attack on our soil.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT: Jon Meacham, your magazine asked the people across the country about that issue. Necessary to combot—combat terrorism? Forty-one say yes; goes too far in invading privacy, 53. You heard Speaker Gingrich saying the president has to speak publicly to the country to reassure them about a program like this.

MR. JON MEACHAM: Yes. Right. There’s a lot of drip, drip, drip going on, I think, particularly with the National—the NSA, No Such Agency. Well, there’s clearly such an agency and its—we’re hearing more and more about what, what they’ve been up to and hats off to USA Today for the scoop this week. My sense is that as much as the president is going to talk about Medicare, as much as he’s going to talk about immigration, as much as he’s going to talk about the tax cuts, in our poll, 80 percent or more of folks who are disapproving of the president are disapproving of three big things: Iraq, Katrina and the deficit. So these other issues are hugely important and should be addressed, but he has these central problems and it’s very hard to change the subject.

We’re only 22 weeks away from the midterm election. Fifty-seven percent of the country in our poll says that the Bush-Cheney administration—when you ask it that way. When you say Bush-Cheney, have they gone too far in expanding executive power, say yes. So almost two-thirds of the country say that. The other factoid which is of interest is he’s, President Bush is heading into the midterm with the lowest approval rating of any president in history of polling.

MR. RUSSERT: It is interesting. You also asked this question about history. How will they judge George Bush? Above average, 16; average, 32; below average, 50. How would that rank in terms of other presidents?

MR. MEACHAM: It’s bad and it’s clearly—now we always feel that we’re dwelling with pygmies and then they become giants after they’re gone. So you have to allow for some of that. But 71 percent of the country—which is the highest number in the history of the Newsweek poll—are dissatisfied with the way things are going. You look at the number that says the president is not doing as good a—is doing a worse job or about the same. Only 4 percent believe he’s doing better.

We’ve reached this sort of moment of, of stagnation with the president, and...

MR. RUSSERT: And yet the White House advisors will say if Iraq turns around and become a beacon for democracy and there’s an immigration plan and so forth, history will look much differently on this president.

MR. MEACHAM: And—well, absolutely. And let us pray that happens, because we’re all better off if things go well, the country’s better off if things go well. But the problem is—and you saw it this week with the NSA news—is that the president is not fully—does not appear to be fully addressing the concerns of the country and of Iraq and is not just being completely straightforward about it, I think.

MR. HARWOOD: Tim, this phone records dispute is really an inkblot test for the polarization we have in our politics right now, and I would say to the author of “American Gospel,” it’s a question of faith. Do you have faith in the good intentions of this administration or not? If you explain to the American people that they’re analyzing records of phone calls, running them through a computer trying to look for patterns, if you have faith in the good intentions of the administration, that doesn’t look so bad. But if you don’t, it looks like some sort of a plot.

You know the great historian, Bernard Bailyn, once explained the American Revolution by saying its leaders were convinced that the British crown actually had a conspiracy to take away their liberty. There are a lot of Democrats who feel that way about this administration right now.

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