Howard Dean: 'That's just gossip'

Chris Matthews Host of 'Hardball' • Profile

As each day passes, Democrats appear more confident that they can make significant gains in the mid-term elections this November, but can they take control of Congress?  Howard Dean was the governor of Vermont for 11 years.  He ran for president in 2004, and now he's the chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

Chris Matthews discussed mid-term elections and the Clintons with the Howard Dean.  This is a transcript of their conversation.

CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST, "HARDBALL":  Can your party win control of Congress come November?

HOWARD DEAN, DNC CHAIRMAN:  Yes.  If we campaign hard in all 435 districts with a unified message, we're going to be in control of the House and we may well take back the Senate as well. 

MATTHEWS:  Have you got that unified message?

DEAN:  I think we do.  We want openness and honesty in government, American jobs that will stay in America, a real security program which depends on telling the truth to our soldiers and citizens before we send troops abroad, a health care system that works for everybody.  These things are things that I think Americans really want, and I think they really want change and we'll provide that.

MATTHEWS:  Let me ask you about honesty in government.  What's your main bull's eye there in terms of dishonesty, because clearly you're pegging it to something in the news?

DEAN:  Well, we're pegging it to sort of a culture of corruption that the Republicans have brought not just to Washington, but to a lot of state governments as well.  You've got the White House with Karl Rove in it, who leaked security information during a time of war, still has a security clearance. 

The procurement officer was arrested at the White House.  That hasn't happened for several hundred years, or 135 years.  We've got the vice president's chief of staff indicted, the Republican leader in the House indicted.  His successor got rid of all the ethics legislation that was pending.  The Republican leader of the Senate under investigation for insider trading. 

People want a change.  They're tired of this.  We need honesty again in government.  We're not perfect, but we will pass ethics legislation in the first 100 days that prohibits free trips on planes, prohibits free lunches, and stops people from sticking things in appropriations bills after they've already been passed that gives away billions of dollars to oil companies and folks like that.

MATTHEWS:  Why don't you demand that the vice president come clean in his role in the CIA leak case?  He seems like he gets a free ride from your party.  You never hear anybody out there yelling.  We've got Scooter Libby on trial for 30 years, facing 30 years imprisonment, all kinds of filings coming from the special prosecutor, and your side of the aisle, politically, just sits there and watches and never excoriates the man who's more and more at the center of this situation.

DEAN:  Chris, there's two reasons for that.  The first is, the American people know what Dick Cheney is.  His popularity rating is in the 20s.  Secondly, we need a positive agenda.  It's not enough to complain about the Republican corruption.  We need a positive agenda out there. 

MATTHEWS:  You just went through an entire list, like a wanted list, of all the Republican officeholders or ex-officeholders who are guilty of corruption and now you're saying you don't want to run a negative campaign.  You just did. 

DEAN:  Our major part of our message is what we're going to do, not what the Republicans have done wrong.  We know what the Republicans have done wrong.

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