MTP Transcript for Feb. 25, 2007

MS. GOODWIN: Well, I think that’s the decision they’ve made, in part, because it’s too late for her now to change her position. If she had done it a half a year ago, then she might have been fine. But now it would look so calculating, so why not go with the other side of that and say it shows strength and responsibility, as she talks about it. You know, I think what was just said is so true, though. If you do change her mind, what old Abe Lincoln used to say, “I’d like to believe I’m smarter today than I was yesterday. I know things now I didn’t know then.” But on the other hand, what are we doing by demanding these apologies? You want to know that the person learned from the mistake so they won’t make it again. You know, we always cite John Kennedy as polls go up to 83,000--83, 83 percent when he acknowledged error on the Bay of Pigs, but more importantly, he changed his way of decision making so the Cuban missile crisis came out well. So the question for her is, what did you learn? Not just how you were misled, but what did you learn about why you made the wrong, wrong decision.

MR. RUSSERT: The war in Iraq, it continues to be an issue also in the

Republican primary. John McCain, the strongest supporter of the war, staunch

ally of President Bush on the war, and yet he’s trying to distinguish support

for the war with criticism of the management of the war. Here is one

reference last month. “The president listened too much to the vice president.

Of course, the president bears the ultimate responsibility, but he was” “badly served by both the vice president and, most of all, the secretary of defense.”

On Monday, Senator McCain even went further with Donald Rumsfeld. Let’s watch.

(Videotape, Monday)

SEN. JOHN McCAIN (R-AZ): (Bluffton, South Carolina) I think that Donald Rumsfeld will go down in history as one of the worst secretaries of defense in history.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT: And this is how Vice President Cheney responded, “John [McCain’s] entitled to his opinion. I just think he’s wrong.

“John said some nasty things about me the other day and then the next time he saw me, ran over to me and apologized. Maybe he’ll apologize to Rumsfeld.

“I think [Rumsfeld] did a superb job in terms of managing the Pentagon under extraordinarily difficult circumstances.”

Dan Balz.

MR. BALZ: I don’t think he’s going to apologize to Donald Rumsfeld for what he said. He may have apologized to the vice president, and he may have felt that that was an impolitic remark on his part, but he feels very strongly that this war was badly managed, totally mismanaged. We interviewed him a month ago, and he described it as a train wreck, watching this thing occur. He’s in a very tough position. He is the architect, in many ways, of the surge policy, or certainly identified as such. His political aspirations, his political hopes for becoming president, may well depend on whether this surge works and what things look like a year from now or 15 months from now. At the same time, he is very unhappy with the way the administration has mismanaged the war. He’s not willing, at this point, to break with the president, and so he’s going after others who’ve been responsible.

MR. RUSSERT: The vice president and the secretary of defense.

MR. BALZ: Right.

MR. RUSSERT: Pretty close to the top.

MR. BALZ: It’s very close to the top. But, but he, you know, he, he made a decision, 2004, when he went around the country with the president, strongly supporting him as a strong wartime leader. He can’t go back on that at this point. So he’s got to go after others.

MR. RUSSERT: Maureen Dowd, you traveled to Seattle to cover John McCain campaigning this week. What did you see? What did you report?

MS. DOWD: Well, I mean, my bottom line was that, you know, I tend to miss John McCain even when I’m with him, because he is such a different candidate than the one that I covered in 2000. But he—I asked him in Seattle whether he thought Cheney—you know, I said Cheney has reached new lows of lunacy here. He’s saying that if the British get out of Iraq, that’s a positive thing for us, but we have to stay or al-Qaida wins, and any Democrats who try to find an exit are helping al-Qaida. And, you know, the old John McCain might have answered that, that question with a salty answer, and this one just started talking about how grateful he was to the British. So he’s, he’s just stuck. He’s on the bridge of a ship with W and Cheney on the war, and it’s sinking.

MR. RUSSERT: Byron York, is the war a problem for John McCain?

MR. YORK: Yes. And—but, but he believes in this policy. I called John Weaver, who is McCain’s top adviser, yesterday, and I said, “You know, about a year ago you said to me if George W. Bush and John McCain are the last two guys standing in favor of bringing democracy to Iraq, so be it.” I reminded him of that, and he said, “Well, we, we may be getting there.” And so he knows its hurt him. But he believes very strongly in this, and, and when you listen to him, he’ll say basically, “My friends, they’re coming after us. If we lose, they’re coming after us. The consequences of defeat are disastrous.” So you know, I think this is one of these things that he could perhaps get some political benefit by nuancing a little bit, but he actually believes in it.

MR. RUSSERT: But Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, and Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of New York, other leading candidates...

MR. YORK: Yeah.

MR. RUSSERT: ...have been very supportive of the war as well, and supportive of the president. I think Sam Brownback, the senator from Kansas, is the only one who publicly came out against the surge.

MR. YORK: Right, and Chuck Hagel, I believe, the...

MR. RUSSERT: If he runs.

MR. YORK: Exactly. And that’s true. I, I spoke to a couple of other strategists for competing campaigns yesterday, and they said, “Well, you know, we’re all for the surge—McCain, Giuliani, Romney. But McCain owns the surge.” So inside the Republican field, I think there’s this feeling that, while they all support the policy, one candidate would be hurt more if it failed.

MR. RUSSERT: And McCain—excuse me, Giuliani and Romney can say we’re not part of Washington, and we can go there and fix that mess.

MR. YORK: That’s right. They haven’t been on it—with it the whole way.

MR. RUSSERT: Doris Kearns Goodwin, in your native state of Massachusetts, the former Governor Mitt Romney seeking the presidency. In every description of him, in the first sentence is “a Mormon.” You remember well John Kennedy running for president in 1960, “a Catholic.” Talk about the parallels you see.

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