MTP Transcript for Nov. 12

MR. RUSSERT: Robert Gates was Bush 41’s director of the CIA. He also worked on national security staff. His, his deputy was Condoleezza Rice, now secretary of state.

But, David, back to the Rummy thing. Newt Gingrich is saying that the president should have fired Rumsfeld two weeks before the election, and they would have held the Senate—the Republicans—and probably saved 10 to 15 seats.

MR. GREGORY: Well, look, I—there’s a lot of debate about this. The reality is that there was an ongoing debate, we now know, led by Andy Card and others within the administration, to fire Rumsfeld right after the re-election in 2004. I think there was also a feeling, in the run-up to the election this time, that to send that kind of signal would have been to say, basically, “We’re losing the war and our policy is a failure.” Now, a lot of people have concluded that anyway. But they thought it would’ve hurt, hurt the base. You know, Newt Gingrich also saying if he had done it longer out, two weeks, maybe two months, maybe it would’ve had some impact, could’ve helped them keep the Senate. So it’s a close call. The choice that the president made was to stick by him as early as a week before the elections.

MR. RUSSERT: A week before the election, he told the wire services that Rumsfeld was doing a fantastic job...

MR. GREGORY: Right.

MR. RUSSERT: ...and he would be there through the end of the second term. The president had a news conference on Wednesday, was asked about that. You were there. Let’s watch.

(Videotape, November 8, 2006):

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Thank you, Mr. President. Last week you told us that Secretary Rumsfeld would be staying on. Why is the timing right now for this, and how much does it have to do with the election results?

PRES. GEORGE W. BUSH: Right. No. You and Hunt and Kyle came in the Oval Office and you asked—Hunt asked me the question, and one week before the campaign. And basically “Is he going to do something about Rumsfeld and the vice president?” And my answer was, you know, “They’re going to stay on.” And the reason why is I didn’t want to inject a major decision about this war in the, in the final days of the campaign. So the only way to answer that question and to get you onto another question was to give you that answer.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT: An inoperative choice of words in terms of...

MR. GREGORY: Right, well, he deliberately misled those reporters, and he said he did it because he didn’t want to inject politics in the campaign. You have to wonder why—how he could—was there a way to, to get around that question in some fashion so he didn’t have to give that ammunition to people who thought the policy was a failure. And that’s what he did right at the end.

Look, Republicans were worried that the president was talking about the war at all within the last couple weeks of the campaign. He’s saying that he was frustrated, that, you know, that we have to adapt. A lot of people thought, A, that that was too late to realize that, and B, he shouldn’t have been injecting that in the last couple of weeks.

MR. RUSSERT: Does that hurt his credibility with you and the press corps?

MR. GREGORY: Well, I—look, you know, you like to get a straight answer out of the president. He laid out his case for, for why he did it, and there’s no question that would’ve injected politics. So I think people see it different ways.

MR. RUSSERT: Maureen Dowd, we’re hearing a lot about bipartisanship. The president saying, you know, he came to Washington, he was a uniter, not a divider. This has been a very polarizing administration, playing to the Republican base. Is the Bush White House capable of now pivoting and being truly bipartisan, working with the congressional leadership, and are the Democrats in a receptive mood? Or is it time for payback?

MS. DOWD: Well, I think that Bush is going to try to, at first, go back to his persona that he had in the Texas legislature of someone who could work with the other side. But I think it’s going to be very tough for him because he and Rummy and Cheney have basically had this “Who’s your daddy?” attitude to the world and the Congress, and they’re used to the executive branch getting more and more and more power. And now they have Nancy Pelosi saying to them, “Who’s your mommy?”

MR. GREGORY: But, but, look, Rumsfeld’s gone. There’s going to be some targets of opportunity here, whether it’s immigration or the minimum wage. But this is still all about Iraq. And here’s what in—what’s interesting to me about what Senator McCain said on this program today. That is, you either send more troops or you get out now. He recognizes there aren’t going to be more troops. So if it’s get out now, that’s a consistent message, in some ways, with the Democrats, who say “We’ve got to put more pressure on the Iraqi government, tell them we’re not here forever. ‘You either clean up the militias, do something about the violence, or we are going to get out.’” I think the president’s going to get closer to sending that message himself and he may use that—the Baker commission, to do the same.

RUSSERT: You may have the candidates for president in 2008 of both parties overseeing a withdrawal strategy as opposed to a victory strategy. Calling it victory.

MS. DOWD: Right.

MR. RUSSERT: Fair?

MS. DOWD: Mm-hmm.

MR. RUSSERT: Yeah!

MR. GREGORY: Well, you know, right. But I think that’s right. And I think that’s what—for—if you look forward to ‘08, both Republicans and Democrats want to be debating an exit strategy instead of debating the level of violence and what to do next.

MS. DOWD: Well, the fascinating thing is James Baker’s the ultimate fixer. He’s fantastic. He even survived an interview with Sacha Baron Cohen. But can he fix Iraq, or is it too late?

MR. RUSSERT: We will find out. Maureen Dowd of The New York Times, we’ll read your columns. David Gregory, we’ll watch your reports on NBC News.

And we’ll be right back.

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