Transcript for May 14

MR. RUSSERT: It is interesting to hear Speaker Gingrich talk about the rhetoric and the need for civility, because he was one of the foremost fiercest partisans in Washington. John McCain yesterday went to see Jerry Falwell—and we can have those pictures—someone that he once called an agent of intolerance. There they are together at Liberty University. And Senator McCain also addressed this theme. Let’s listen.

(Videotape, May 13, 2006):

SEN. JOHN McCAIN (R-AZ): We have fought among ourselves before in our history, over big things and small, with worse vitriol and bitterness than we experience today. Let us exercise our responsibilities as free people, but let us remember we are not enemies. We are compatriots, defending ourselves from a real enemy. We have nothing to fear from each other. We are arguing over the means to better secure our freedom, promote the general welfare and defend our ideals. It should remain an argument among friends.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT: Will it?

MS. WOODRUFF: Well, Tim, number one on the speech that John McCain gave, I think it was a smart speech. It was a safe speech. He didn’t go beyond what he said before. He didn’t say anything he’s going to have to defend. The bigger problem for John McCain, though, I think there’s to some extent too much focus, too much worry about whether it was the right thing or the wrong thing for him to go off and make a speech to a religious right group. There’s a history of prominent politicians doing that. Thirty years ago Teddy Kennedy went to Alabama, sat on a stage with George Wallace, the segregationist governor of that state. So there’s a history of that.

John McCain’s bigger problem down the road will be does he keep the same position on gay marriage and, and even larger than that, his authenticity, Tim, is all around his position on fiscal issues. And, and if he changes his position, which he’s articulated for some time, that he’s a fiscal conservative, you know, some Republican supply-siders are saying that’s what he’s changed, that he now favors extending the tax cuts, making them permanent, that to me would raise questions about whether John McCain is, is the Straight Talk Express guy we thought he was.

MR. RUSSERT: Jon Meacham:

MR. MEACHAM: Well, I thought it was a great speech, actually, McCain gave. He did it in a way—you know, my old friend and editor, Charlie Peters, liked to say, “People listen to sermons by reformed sinners,” and McCain said, you know, “I’ve not always heeded the injunction to love one another as I want to be loved.” And he said very directly that we have to not only tolerate one another’s beliefs but respect them. He did it smartly at Liberty in the context of disagreement about the war in Iraq. What I found fascinating is obviously, the lessons of that can be applied to anything else, any contentious issue. And what he was arguing for was an American way of talking about issues in a way that’s sort of straight out of a tradition. There’s a line of John Adams, “I hate polemical divinity and polemical politics and I just want to do good by my neighbor and do right by the creation of which I’m an infinitesimal part.” And that was sort of the spirit in which McCain was speaking.

And I think there’s a connection between these two things. I think if the president were a bit more open, a bit more vocal about what’s in his heart and what the honest problems are we’ve encountered in Iraq and elsewhere, I think that his numbers would go up because people would begin to see that he’s honestly struggling with these issues.

MR. RUSSERT: John:

MR. HARWOOD: Tim, a couple of years ago, John McCain and the people around him had a decision to make, “Is the right way to run for president to go third party, to run independent, or to run within the Republican Party?” Once they chose that fork in the road, to stay in the Republican Party, speeches like this were given. And his team thinks it’s a good thing to get it out of the way now rather than next year when he announces for president. There is some cost.

You know, I, I wrote a story recently about John McCain, described him as a maverick, and the editor said, “Wait, isn’t that wrong? Isn’t he a former maverick?” But I tell you what, when you have taken on a president of your party on taxes, torture and campaign finance reform, your street cred as a maverick is pretty solid.

MS. WOODRUFF: And I think it’s important to add, Tim, that I don’t, I don’t think what John McCain’s people are trying—what John McCain is trying to do is, is assume that he’s going to win over the religious right, the religious conservatives, for him I think it’s more about reducing their anti-McCain passion.

OFFSCREEN VOICE: Right.

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