MTP Transcript for Mar. 11, 2007

MR. DUFFY: And very influential, still. He—particularly—you saw him go to Pakistan just a few weeks ago and read the riot act to General Musharraf. He’s one of the leading spokesmen when it comes to taking more invasive action with respect to Iran. But, when you talk to senior officials and ask what has changed, they say that, for the first time, the vice president is losing arguments when it comes to—he isn’t winning—he isn’t losing them all, but he’s losing more than he has before. And that’s one of the reasons we see these course corrections we’re talking about overseas.

MR. RUSSERT: Ted Koppel, pardon, role of Cheney?

MR. KOPPEL: Somebody’s a—somebody’s an old Al Capp fan. Look at that...

MR. DUFFY: Yes...(unintelligible).

MR. KOPPEL: ...look at that cover again.

MR. DUFFY: Well, I can’t remember the character’s name...

MR. KOPPEL: No, no, no, it was that—it was something like Bafluflula.

MR. DUFFY: Yeah, right. Only...

MR. KOPPEL: I mean, the, the dark cloud over, over Vice President Cheney.

Look, I think it’s a question of how you want to interpret the, the president’s ratings. When you’re down at 29 or 30 percent approval rating, how much worse can it get? Or, or can you afford to do anything as potentially provocative as an early pardon? My...

MR. RUSSERT: But those 29 or 30 percent seem to be the hard-core conservative Republican base, which is pushing pretty hard for the pardon.

MR. KOPPEL: Yes. That’s—it’s a—it’s, it’s a puzzlement, isn’t it?MR. RUSSERT: Michael Beschloss?

MR. BESCHLOSS: Well, you’re exactly right. It may actually help his numbers a little bit by making that base even more happy with him. But I think, in general, you know, this is a president who presumably wants to help his successor be a Republican in 2008, and you can’t help but imagine that his political handlers, George Bush’s political handlers, are telling him, “Yes, you may want to do a pardon now. You may feel that this was unfair, but you’re going to burden the Republican nominee in 2008 with this, so why do it?”

MR. RUSSERT: 2008, we—Wall Street Journal/NBC was doing some polling, and let me show this first question to you, which surprised me, I must tell you. “How closely are you following the 2008 presidential race”? Seventy-three percent of Americans say they are following it closely. This is March of 2007. Twenty-seven not closely.

Ted Koppel, you surprised by that?

MR. KOPPEL: Yeah, I am surprised by that. And yet, it’s, it’s fascinating. I mean, we’ve got this wide open field right now. We’re talking about potentially the, the two nominees having spent, what, like a billion dollars, 500 million dollars each by the time we get through with this? So these early stages are terribly important. And you’ve got some awfully interesting characters there. I mean, you’ve got, you know, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and, and, and John McCain and...

MR. RUSSERT: Rudy Giuliani...

MR. KOPPEL: Rudy Giuliani.

MR. RUSSERT: ...Mitt Romney, John Edwards.

MR. KOPPEL: Yeah, it’s interesting.

MR. RUSSERT: Sixteen candidates. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska’s thinking about running tomorrow. He’s senator from Nebraska, the most supportive senator of George W. Bush except he has broken with him on the war.

MR. DUFFY: And that’s what—that would distinguish him, particularly in the Republican field. The Republican who has become opposed to the president on the war, particularly the surge, would create a whole new, you know, category on that side of the race. And even well—he would be able to have appeal across party lines, which may be what Chuck Hagel is thinking. Try it for a while as a Republican and if it doesn’t work necessarily as a—as, as a potential nominee, there’s a possibility here if the Democrats do not nominate someone who was against the war from the start, for a third-party candidate, someone who is clearly against the war going back or going forward.

MR. RUSSERT: And, Dana Priest, every Democratic candidate has now endorsed legislation which sets a firm deadline of August 31^st, 2008 to withdraw all troops. Senator Clinton, who had resisted a firm timetable, now says, “Well that’s a goal, and I can accept it.” The fact is that this presidential race is driving the Democratic view on the war.

MS. PRIEST: Well, absolutely, and, and you saw that Clinton is having such a hard time not apologizing for her vote, and I think this was a way for her to not make a second issue, not be, you know, have any wiggle room on what her view on Iraq may be. But I have to say, part of what I think is so fascinating about this—and I cannot believe that I’m actually saying this—is the personal issues involved here. I mean, what will, as Giuliani called it this week, “blended marriages,” what is that going to be in terms of a character issue? You’ve got—most of the candidates have been married more than once. So does that mean it’s going to—we’re going to have more skeletons of a personal nature come out? Or does it mean that that is going to equalize and not be an issue as much as it has in the past? So I think on all levels, from Iraq to marriage, it’s a fascinating time.

MR. RUSSERT: The leading Democratic candidates have been married once, the leading Republican candidates several, which his quite interesting in terms of discussions of values and cultural and societal mores and things like that.

MR. DUFFY: It complicates it, particularly for the Republicans, because I think it was Richard Land, one of the officials of the Southern Baptist Convention, said this week that multiple marriages is a—is a deal-killer with evangelical Christians. And we have a couple of those on the Republican side. That—it’s another reason why Hagel probably sees a good reason, perhaps, an opportunity to get in. That race is going to have, you know, trouble coalescing—the base is going to have trouble coalescing around a candidate. And it may be down to 30 percent for the president, but that group is not clear about where it’s going yet.

MR. RUSSERT: Here are the latest numbers with the Democrats. We have Clinton at 40; Obama at 28; Edwards, 15; Richardson, 5. But when we pushed the voters and said, “OK, if it was just between Clinton, Obama, what would you do,” 47-39. Pretty close for this stage of the race.

The Republicans, they list their top favorites as the following: Giuliani 38;

McCain, 24; Gingrich is not in the race at 10; Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts, 8. Again, if you take the top two and push people, Giuliani a sizable lead, 55-34.

Ted Koppel, Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of New York, pro-abortion rights, pro-gay rights, pro-gun control, married three times. But the, the Republicans seem to also say, “All right, but he was there on September 11^th. He’s a strong leader.”

MR. KOPPEL: You know, anytime that you look at numbers like that, two years in advance, you’ve got to say someone has his head in a terribly uncomfortable position. You know, I mean, this, this is—this is not where the numbers are going to be six months from now. This is not where the numbers are going to be a year from now.

MR. RUSSERT: Where are they going to be?

MR. KOPPEL: Who in heaven’s name knows? But, you know, language means something. You said something a moment ago about it is the Democrats’ goal to have all the troops out of Iraq by August of 2008. Sometimes goals are met, sometimes goals are not met. The Democrats are going to find themselves in a terribly uncomfortable position when this becomes their war. And believe me, George Bush is going to hold onto it and pass it off to them. They’re not just going to be able to, you know, say, “Well, it was his war, and it’s all over, and we’re pulling out now.” This is going to be an issue a year from now, two years from now, three years from now. It’s not going to be all that easy to get out.

MR. RUSSERT: In the debates in October of 2008, every Democratic candidate—well, Republicans---will have to answer in January of ‘09...

MR. KOPPEL: That’s right.

MR. RUSSERT: ...what’re you going to do?

MR. KOPPEL: Exactly, exactly.

MR. RUSSERT: Michael Beschloss, how do you see this race unfolding?

MR. BESCHLOSS: Well, on the—on the Democratic side, you know, Hillary Clinton is oddly in this position of being the establishment candidate, which was sure not her husband’s position in 1992, and those people do not usually have a great time in the Democratic primary process. Look at an Edmund Muskie in 1972 or Walter Mondale in 1984, who finally won, but had a very hard time with the insurgent, Gary Hart. Anti-war insurgents do very well in Democratic primary processes, and I think we’re seeing that here.

On the Republican side, you know, as Ted was talking, first it’ll be about Giuliani. Go back to 1952. Americans felt very frustrated by the Korean war. They figured, you know, we had just won World War II seven years ago, “Why are we mired down in Korea; it’s not working. Why can’t President Truman do something?” And they turned to Dwight Eisenhower, who was a very different person from Giuliani, but they felt that he had that same strong leadership, that ability to do things like 9/11 with Giuliani, cleaning up New York of crime, as he did. Eisenhower was asked by one of his handlers, “Do you think you could do something about Korea?” And his reply was, “I don’t run no bad wars.”

MR. RUSSERT: To be continued. Michael Beschloss, Michael Duffy, Dana Priest. Ted Koppel, tonight, 9 PM, Discovery Channel, “Our Children’s Children’s War.”

MR. KOPPEL: Thank you.

MR. RUSSERT: Thank you all. We’ll be right back.

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