Transcript for Aug. 27

MR. NOVAK: Because she’s just so mechanical. I mean, I mean she’s so late in calling for the ouster of, of Rumsfeld. Everybody was doing that, and she had this, this staged confrontation with him, where she had this, this script of, of saying what a mistake he had, he had made, it took her about five minutes to get through it. To me, she is, she is—whenever she has a tough situation, she gets that staff together and they program her. And, and, and what they seem to be deathly afraid of is a heavyset guy from Tennessee named Al Gore, who, who, who she hates, and he hates her, and this is, this is the nightmare of the Clintonians, that Gore is going to come over the hill and vanquish her.

MR. HUNT: And you love it.

MR. RUSSERT: I think the, the news media has a bias for a Clinton-Gore race.

Is Hillary Clinton trying, Hillary Clinton trying to get herself right on the war with the Democratic primary base?

MR. HUNT: Well, look, Tim. There, there—I think there’re two realities for Hillary Clinton. Number one is that she is going to be attacked, maybe effectively from the left, if she runs in ‘08. I suspect from a John Moore, more likely a John Edwards or a Russ Feingold than a, than an Al Gore.  It’s—her vote’s going to hurt her. But if she were to do a 180 now, it would be the functional equivalent of ‘I voted for the war, and—before I voted against it.’ I mean, that, that would be, I think, even, even dumber.

MS. O’BEIRNE: In this—the reality of the Democratic Party, I mean, this war has never been popular, was never supported by a large majority. A majority of House Democrats voted against authorizing it. So there’s a particular problem there, and far more disarray than Republicans are over this. And then her particular problem of course is that the rest of the ‘08 field either wasn’t in the Senate or have already said, like Edwards and Kerry, it was a big mistake. She can’t say like they can, it seems to me, “If I knew now what I knew then,” because what we all knew then was what the Clinton administration knew then. There was no dispute over that intelligence. The Clinton administration officials saw it the same way.

MR. ROBINSON: I think it’s just going to be a continuing problem for her throughout this campaign. It’s a very difficult position for a Democratic office-seeker to have held, to have been so pro-war for so long. And it’s also an illustration of how it really is difficult to run for president for a sitting senator, it really is, who’s had to cast these votes.

MR. RUSSERT: None of us have a crystal ball, but educated hunch, 10 weeks out, House, Senate, what do you see?

MR. NOVAK: Well, if the election were held today, I can’t tell you what’s going to happen on Election Day, I would say that the Democrats will win 25 to 30 seats in the House. All they need is 12. I don’t think it’s—my hunch is they’re not going to be that bad, but that’s—they start, they start way ahead.

It’s hard for them in the Senate to pick up the six seats. You can even count to five and not get to six, but Senator George Allen of Virginia is doing his best to try to, try to make that sixth seat viable for a Democratic win.

MR. RUSSERT: Albert Hunt:

MR. HUNT: I, I am in the incredible position of agreeing with almost everything Bob Novak said. Look, there’s an anti-Republican political storm out there. It’s a level two now, that’s 20, 25 seats and three or four Senate seats. It may, by Election Day, be a level four, which point they’ll win this—the Democrats will win the Senate and they’ll pick up—there will be members of the House looking up bios on November 8 to see who they are.

MR. RUSSERT: Gene Robinson:

MR. ROBINSON: A long time between now and Election Day. I, I actually think it probably tightens up a little bit from what it looks like now. I think maybe the Democrats do get the House. I’m not sure about the Senate despite all of the macaca in Virginia. We’ll see.

MR. RUSSERT: Kate O’Beirne:

MS. O’BEIRNE: Given the historic trends and the, and the mood and the president’s ratings, you’d certainly rather be a Democrat right about now, but the Republicans hope to devote September to talking about national security, which has benefited them in the past. Unclear if it’ll be enough, and they’ve got to turn out disenchanted conservative voters.

MR. RUSSERT: Before we go, Robert Novak, the story that will not go away.  Newsweek today has a story that on the morning of October 1, ‘03, “Secretary of State Colin Powell received an urgent phone call from his No. 2” Richard Armitage.

“Armitage had been at home reading the newspaper,” a column by one Robert Novak. “Months earlier Novak had caused a huge stir when he revealed that Valerie Plame, wife of Iraq-war critic Joseph Wilson, was a CIA officer.

“Ever since, Washington had been trying to find out who leaked the information to Novak. ... Now in a second column, Novak provided a tantalizing clue: his primary source, he wrote, was a ‘senior administration official’ who was ‘not a partisan gunslinger.’ Armitage was shaken. After reading the column, he knew immediately who the leaker was. On the phone with Powell that morning morning, Armitage was ‘in deep distress,’ says a source directly familiar with the conversation.” “‘I’m sure he’s talking about me.’”

The article goes on to quote State Department Intelligence Chief Carl Ford as saying Armitage said, “I’m afraid I’m the guy who may have caused all this,” and that he had met with one Robert Novak on July 8, Mr. Armitage did. Are you now prepared to say, confirm Newsweek that Richard Armitage was one of your sources?

MR. NOVAK: I told Mr. Isikoff, the investigator—he’s a very good investigative reporter, by the way—but I told him that I do not identify my sources on any subject if they’re on a confidential basis until they identify themselves. I don’t say that somebody was or wasn’t. I’m going to say one thing, though, I haven’t said before. And that is that I believe that the time has way passed for my source to identify himself.

MR. RUSSERT: Stay tuned. Robert Novak, Albert Hunt, Eugene Robinson, Kate O’Beirne. Thanks very much. We’ll be right back.

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MR. RUSSERT: That’s all for today. We’ll be back next week as we kick off the return of our MEET THE PRESS Senate Debate series. One of the most closely watched Senate races of the year, Pennsylvania; incumbent Republican Senator Rick Santorum vs. State Treasurer Bob Casey. Santorum vs. Casey.  The debate, right here, next Sunday. If it’s Sunday, it’s MEET THE PRESS.

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