Transcript for Aug. 27

MR. HUNT: Well, Tim, making that statement from Chris Shays all the more remarkable, he not only has been a supporter of the war throughout, but he really was attaching himself to Joe Lieberman, the Independent candidate now in the state of Connecticut, who of course is most identified as being probably the staunchest Democratic supporter of the war.

Just a couple weeks ago, this was Chris Shays’ campaign strategy in this very tough election. Now he’s distanced himself from what has been Joe Lieberman’s position. I think you’re going to see a number of Republicans on Iraq and other issues try to distance themselves from, from George W. Bush over the, over the next couple of weeks. And the, and the—I thought the Shays move was really rather dramatic.

MR. RUSSERT: Do you agree?

MR. NOVAK: I do. I think it’s very interesting that so many of these people on the Republican and the Democratic side who were so eager for this war, and attacked me when I said it was a bad idea to intervene in Iraq and we couldn’t spread—turn Iraq into another Iowa, that—now that—they’re cutting and running, and the idea that the administration didn’t do the job well, that they made mistakes. Not that it was a bad idea in the first place. Maybe that’s for the historians to decide. But I think the, the question, the real question, I believe, maybe journalists ought to consider—reconsider, is not whether they—we’ve done such a terrible job but whether it was an impossible job in the first place and shouldn’t have been started.

MR. RUSSERT: John McCain, who was a staunch supporter, is a staunch supporter, of the war in Iraq, went to Ohio to campaign and said this: “One of the biggest mistakes we made was underestimating the size of the task and the sacrifices that would be required. ... ‘Stuff happens, mission accomplished, last throes, a few dead-enders.’” Those are all quotes of the president or the secretary of defense or the vice president. “I’m just more familiar with those statements than anyone else because it grieves me so much that we had not told the American people how tough and difficult this task would be.”

MR. NOVAK: Well, of course, he—what he wanted was more troops in there. He wanted hundreds of thousands more troops. I cannot understand the logic. I mean, if, if it was difficult to defeat the Iraqi Army, you’d need a lot more troops. But it wasn’t. We beat them easily. I can’t understand the logic of Senator McCain, from the very beginning, in saying more troops were going to solve this problem. Because I—because nobody, I believe, who really has followed it, believes that that, that is the difficulty.

MR. RUSSERT: He said it last week on this program.

MR. NOVAK: I, I know.

MR. RUSSERT: But initially, he said—McCain said we would be greeted as liberators and that it would not be as difficult as it seemed, the initial military invasion. But, Gene Robinson, you hear these sounds, these drumbeats, these different themes, variations of a theme being played out within the Republican Party. What are we hearing?

MR. ROBINSON: Well, where else are Republicans who supported the war going to go? They have to create some distance, I think. They have to—they feel they have to create some distance between themselves and administration policy. And so where they go is not that the war is a mistake but that it has been waged incompetently, or, or the way it has been waged. It’s been lacking in some way. And to varying degrees of strength I think you’re just going to hear that more and more and more unless there’s some, you know, sort of unexpected and really impossible turnaround in the Iraq situation between now and November.

MR. RUSSERT: Has the White House given a green light to fellow Republicans saying it’s OK to criticize us on the management of the war?

MS. O’BEIRNE: Well, well, Tim, they’re, they’re certainly giving that latitude to, to members who, who are really very few, like Chris Shays running in the climate he is in Connecticut. Unfortunately, when politicians look at the, the polling and see how popular the war is in Iraq, they tend to not want to talk about it, they sort of distance themselves from it, which of course is exactly, for Republicans, the wrong thing to do. Nothing would boost their chances more in November than George Bush’s approval rating being higher, than former hawks—that’s who’s persuadable, they don’t have to persuade Michael Moore or Cindy Sheehan. If they could persuade former hawks in the kind of terms John McCain uses, the stakes involved. He distinguishes, as you know, Iraq from Vietnam by reminding us that when we pulled prematurely out of Vietnam, they didn’t come after us. More Republicans ought to be doing that, but all their instincts are not to be doing that.

MR. HUNT: Kate, the problem, however, is that look, Bob, I, I somewhat disagree. You can make the McCain case—we might agree or disagree—but you can make the case that we need to really escalate over there. We need to send more troops, not just take troops from Mosul and send them to Baghdad, but really go and, and, and cut off the Iranians, and, and make a full-fledged effort, and say, “We’re going to be there for years, folks.” Or you can say we’re going to be in a staged withdrawal. We’re going to go to an enclave period and try to create some kind of partition in that unnaturally created country.

The one thing that’s not credible, as the National Review pointed out, is stay the course. Bush’s policy is the one policy that’s absolutely not credible.  So I think that makes it very tough for Republicans today.

MR. ROBINSON: (Unintelligible)...

MS. O’BEIRNE: Right. Well, they are, they are changing that to “adapt for victory” sort of stuff, and it is true that public opinion is closer to the former. Despite all of the bad news and how pessimistic the public is, they do not support leaving prematurely, and a timetable to do so.

MR. ROBINSON: But this has to get better. Things have to get better in Iraq, though.

MR. NOVAK: What they—what they support is leaving, see. They’re—you want to leave prematurely? No, I don’t want to leave prematurely, but I want to leave.

MR. RUSSERT: But it is interesting, also, watching the Democrats. Thus far, John Kerry, John Edwards, Joe Biden have all publicly apologized for their vote. One person who has not apologized for her vote is Hillary Clinton.  Time magazine had this cover story on the senator from New York, and added this: “Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) ... is not as insulated as she once was on the left, which is far angrier than it used to be. Some liberals say they will not forgive her support for the Iraq invasion or, even worse, her refusal to recant that vote. When Hillary addressed the liberal group Campaign for America’s Future in June, she was booed. And everyone there knew whom Kerry meant when he said, at the same conference, ‘It’s not enough to argue with the logistics or to argue about the details. It is essential to acknowledge that the war itself was a mistake.’ Hillary of late has made a point of stepping up her criticism of the Bush administration, to the point of calling for the ouster of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.” This weekend, she met with Ned Lamont, the Democratic anti-war candidate in Connecticut.  Bob Novak, why are you shaking your head?

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