MTP Transcript for Feb. 25, 2007

SEN. LEVIN: It’s now a haven for terrorists. It wasn’t before we attacked Iraq, but it now is. The question is how do we try to turn that around. And I would leave a limited force, as I indicated. And I think our resolution will do this for a number of purposes, including a limited anti- or counterterrorism purpose. There are now 5,000 to 6,000 al-Qaida people in Iraq. There weren’t any, or there were just a handful, prior to the war. Now they’re there because of the policies of this administration. And we believe we should leave a limited force for a number of limited purposes, that being one of them.

MR. RUSSERT: Before you go, you are chairman of the Armed Services Committee, as I mentioned. These are the headlines all week long about Walter Reed Hospital and the plight of young men and women, many of them amputees, who came home. Here’s the headline: “Soldiers Face Neglect, Frustration At Army’s Top Medical Facility.” “The Hotel Aftermath: Inside Mologne House,” “Survivors of War Wrestle With Military Bureaucracy and Personal Demons.” And then this cover of Newsweek, “Shattered in body and mind, too many veterans are facing poor care and red tape, why we’re failing our wounded.” “One reason to worry about a crush of new vets at the VA has to do with the proportion of wounded to dead Americans in Iraq. In Vietnam and Korea, about three Americans were wounded for every one who died. The ratio in World War II was nearly” 2-to-1. “In Iraq, 16 soldiers are wounded or get sick for every one who dies.” Could your committee have done more oversight with Walter Reed?

SEN. LEVIN: Sure. I think all—it was the lack of oversight here for the last many, many years, for a number of reasons. And by the way, I think, in part, it was because it was a Republican Congress and a Republican president that didn’t—they didn’t want to embarrass the president in a whole host of areas. But we have a responsibility, and the secretary of defense, I think, has accepted that responsibility. And I give him credit. He welcomed those headlines. He wasn’t defensive about it. He was disgusted, and he was absolutely upset, and he said that they are going to act, and that’s clearly overdue. Where we need a surge is not in Iraq, we need a surge of concern for our troops, for the veterans, for the injured, for the wounded, for the families of those who lost loved ones. That’s the surge of concern, and that’s the surge that we need. We’re going to have a hearing a week from Tuesday on the Walter Reed situation. We’re going to take all the steps that are needed. These young men and women deserve everything we can possibly give them.

MR. RUSSERT: Are you going to go out there personally?

SEN. LEVIN: We are.

MR. RUSSERT: When?

SEN. LEVIN: Next week.

MR. RUSSERT: Senator Carl Levin, we thank you for joining us and sharing your views.

SEN. LEVIN: Thank you, Tim.

MR. RUSSERT: Coming next, Hillary Clinton vs. Barack Obama, Dick Cheney vs. John McCain—the rhetoric of the 2000 race through the eyes of Dan Balz, Maureen Dowd, Doreen—Doris Kearns Goodwin, and Byron York. Our political roundtable is next, coming up only on MEET THE PRESS.

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MR. RUSSERT: Our MEET THE PRESS roundtable, Decision 2008, after this brief station break.

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MR. RUSSERT: And we are back.

Maureen Dowd, out there in California, let me start with you. You started all this on Wednesday with your column, talking to former Clinton fund-raiser, now Hollywood movie and music mogul David Geffen. He told you, “I don’t think that another incredibly polarizing figure,” talking about Hillary Clinton, “can bring the country together. Obama is inspirational, and he’s not from the Bush royal family or the Clinton royal family. Everybody in politics lies, but [the Clintons] do it with such ease,” it is “troubling.”

Well, that fired off the Clinton campaign. This is how they responded. They put an e-mail out that says, “If Senator Obama is indeed sincere about his repeated claims to change the tone of our politics, he should immediately denounce” those “remarks, remove Mr. Geffen from his campaign and return his money.”

The Obama campaign shot back, We’re not “going to get in the middle of a disagreement between the Clintons and someone who” has once, “was once one of their biggest supporters.” It’s “ironic” “the Clintons had no problem with David Geffen when [he] was raising them $18 million and sleeping at their invitation in the Lincoln bedroom.”

Senator Obama himself on Wednesday said, “It’s not clear to me why I’d be apologizing for someone else’s remark.” And on Friday, Senator Obama said, “I told my staff” “I don’t want us to be a party to these kinds of distractions because I want to make sure that we’re spending time talking about issues. My preference going forward is that we have to be careful not to slip into playing the game as it customarily is played.”

Looking back a few days later, Maureen Dowd, what played out, what did you see, what did we learn?

MS. MAUREEN DOWD: Well, the big tiff in Tinseltown is a fascinating glimpse into these two candidates. No one here is even talking about Brad Pitt and Meryl Strip—Meryl Streep. Hillary and Obama are the stars out here, and I think that David Geffen gave voice to what a lot of Democratic donors and supporters had been secretly worried about, and, in fact, it’s reflected in Hillary’s own talking points for her supporters, which is the fact that she’s polarizing, that she’s calculating, that she’s overscripted, and that her relationship with Bill could still cause problems. And, you know, he was bold enough to say that, and that sort of broke the dam of nervousness over that.

MR. RUSSERT: Dan Balz, what’s your sense?

MR. DAN BALZ: Well, this was, A, another example of how extraordinarily intense and early this campaign has gotten under way. I mean, to have this kind of a soap opera in February of 2007 as opposed to November of 2007 or in the middle of the primaries is pretty shocking. The interesting thing about this is that I don’t think either campaign came out of this very well. On the one hand, Senator Clinton’s campaign seemed a little twitchy with the—with the trigger finger on this. They were quick to respond and, in a sense, overly harsh to respond, I thought. And Senator Obama, I think, missed an opportunity to project the kind of campaign that he says he wants to project, which is to get away from the politics of polarization and personalization. They stepped into it, and I think, as his comments suggested on Friday, he’s a little regretful of that.

MR. RUSSERT: Byron York, E.J. Dionne in the Post said that Hillary Clinton, however, was able to knock Barack Obama off his pedestal. One Clinton supporter said, ‘We took the halo off his head.’ What’s your sense of this?

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