MTP Transcript for April 8, 2007

MR. TIM RUSSERT:  Our issues this Easter Sunday:  The president and congressional Democrats square off on Iraq.

The attorney general prepares to testify under oath about the eight dismissed U.S. attorneys.

And the presidential candidates raise big money for a very long campaign. Does either party have a front-runner?

With us, insights and analysis from NBC News chief White House correspondent David Gregory; the Washington editor of the National Review, Kate O’Beirne; NBC News political director Chuck Todd; and senior correspondent for PBS, Judy Woodruff.

And in our MEET THE PRESS Minute, August 27^th, 1948, on this program, this man, Whittaker Chambers, publicly accused State Department official Alger Hiss of being a communist.  Friday, at an all-day symposium at New York University, the debate over Hiss’ loyalty and whether he was a Soviet spy continues 59 years later.

Welcome all.  Happy Easter, happy Passover.  Nice to have everybody here.

MR. DAVID GREGORY:  Thank you.

MS. KATE O’BEIRNE:  Thank you.

MR. RUSSERT:  What a news week!  Let’s start right in.  The war in Iraq, Vice President Cheney went on the Rush Limbaugh radio show and said this:

(Audiotape)

VICE PRES. DICK CHENEY:  It’s very, very important that this legislation go forward and that members of Congress be judged base on whether or not they really do support the troops when they’re put to the test.

(End audiotape)

MR. RUSSERT:  David Gregory, really do support the troops, that is putting it out there in a very blunt way.

MR. GREGORY:  Right.  And this is the same kind of rhetoric that this administration has used going back to the ‘04 election cycle which is to say to Democrats, “If you support the troops, you will show it by giving us the money to fund the war.” And that’s the litmus test for this White House.  And Democrats are saying, “No, you can support the troops by saying there is no good to come of this war and the troops should come home.” This is the fight over the endgame of the war now.  Democrats don’t have the votes to impose a deadline on the White House for troop withdrawal, but this has really heated up.

MR. RUSSERT:  The Democrats have used their own rhetoric as well.  Here’s the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, and the majority leader of the Senate, Harry Reid.

(Videotape, March 28, 2007)

HOUSE SPEAKER NANCY PELOSI (D-CA):  Calm down with the threats.  There’s a new Congress in town.

(End videotape)

(Videotape, Tuesday)

SEN. MAJORITY LEADER HARRY REID (D-NV):  He should become in tune with the fact that he is president of the United States, not king of the United States.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT:  Kate O’Beirne, where are we?

MS. O’BEIRNE:  Well, Senator Reid’s criticism, he’s not—they’re not trying circumscribe the president’s regal powers, they’re trying to circumscribe, the White House argues, his presidential powers.  Congress is perfectly free to cut off all funding for this war in Iraq.  They were free, obviously, to not confirm General Petraeus, who’s leading the new strategy.  What they’re not permitted to do is to appropriate funds and then tie the commander in chief’s hands with respect to how to deploy those troops and how to conduct those military missions.  And that’s, of course, what they’re doing.  They’re using the appropriations bill, $100 billion for troops, in order to try to force concessions from George Bush.  And yet, when they’re called on it, that they are jeopardizing funds for troops in the field, they cry foul.  But they are using those, those necessary funds in order to, to force policy changes.

MR. RUSSERT:  Judy Woodruff, the president says, “Give me a bill with the money only for the troops or I’ll veto it.” Congress saying, “Mr.  President, we want a—timetables for withdrawal of American troops.  We want the Iraqis to step up.” What’s going to happen?

MS. JUDY WOODRUFF:  Well, there’s danger for both sides.  There’s the Democrats—the danger for the Democrats is if they don’t blink and they continue on the path that they are on, they, they do risk looking like they’re undercutting these troops.  If they do blink, on the other hand, and say at the last minute, “All right, we’re not going to—we’re not going to string this thing out,” they risk alienating their Democratic base, the people who say, “Look at what the American people said,” the anti-war activists, “look at what they said in November.” But, Tim, I think the greater peril is for Republicans, who drastically need for this, this war in Iraq to turn around. Look at the latest AP/IPSOs poll:  56 percent of the American people, when you ask them is this a hopeless cause or a war that should have been fought, 56 percent say it’s hopeless.  So it’s a—it’s, it’s, I think, tougher for the Republicans.

MR. RUSSERT:  Chuck Todd, where do we go?  The president will say, “All right, you sent me your legislation, and I just vetoed it.  Now what are you going to do?  Are you going to give me money for the troops, or are you going to tell the American people you’re not going to support this war anymore?”

MR. CHUCK TODD:  Well, it’s interesting.  What I don’t understand what the White House is doing is that every time Democrats propose something that allows them to potentially take co-ownership of the war, Bush actually stops them, and politically it actually puts the Democrats in an advantageous position because they can sit there and say, “Well, you know what, we’ve, we’ve tried to take some responsibility for this war.  The president won’t do it.  He’s vetoing this legislation.  This is still Bush’s war.  This is still a Republican war.” And that’s sort of the frustration that I’m sensing from some Republicans, not, not inside the White House, but on Capital Hill and on the campaign trail a little bit, to sit there and say, “Guys, let the Democrats share some ownership of this thing or this war’s going to—it’s going to make 2006 seem like a party.” In 2008 it’s going to be a real death knell for the Republican Party.

MR. RUSSERT:  So if you’re a real cynic, you can say all right, let the Democrats have their way, let them set the deadline of March or August of ‘08.

MR. TODD:  And let them own this war.  That’s right.

MR. RUSSERT:  Start bringing the troops home then—back home then.  Chaos breaks out, you say that’s the Democratic solution.

MR. TODD:  That’s right.  “We tried it—we tried it—we tried it your way,” and then suddenly it’s a referendum on, well, do you want the Republicans to run this war or the Democrats to run this war?  And you’ve gotten a taste of what it would look like if the Democrats ran this war.

MR. GREGORY:  And that’s essentially what the thinking is in the White House, and the president has said it, that they will be blamed if these timetables hold up for the chaos that he believes will ensue.  But you asked what’s going to happen.  Within the White House, there’s a view that they still have some leverage on this, and that’s why the president has come out, why they’ve deployed the vice president to use pretty strong words as he did with Rush Limbaugh this week.  They think Democrats don’t have the votes to sustain a veto of these bills.  They think that Senator Reid wants to have a separate vote on cutting off all funds by March of next year to allow liberals to have some cover and that, ultimately, they’ll get a clean bill.  That’s their view right now.  They think they can hold Republicans behind them for now because Republicans are saying we’ve got Petraeus on the ground, we’ve got a new strategy, we don’t know whether it’s going to succeed or fail.  So, for now, the president can’t bank on having that back up.

MR. RUSSERT:  So, so two votes, they’ll get the money for the troops and have a separate vote to cut off—to have a date certain for withdrawal?

MR. GREGORY:  Right, which they think will not prevail.  Look, Barack Obama said this week as well, “Let’s not play chicken with our troops.”

MS. O’BEIRNE:  Exactly.

MS. WOODRUFF:  Yeah.

MS. O’BEIRNE:  Right.

MR. GREGORY:  He got excoriated by the left, by the way, on the blogosphere for that, which shows the difficulty on the Democratic side as well, in the disagreement.

MS. O’BEIRNE:  But Senator Obama was expressing the fear the Democrats have.

MR. GREGORY:  Right.

MS. O’BEIRNE:  No one wants to play chicken with funding for the troops.  But Nancy Pelosi has a real problem on her hands.  If that supplemental bill moves some to the right, she loses 40 or 50 House Democrats who will not vote for a supplemental that doesn’t have deadlines and funding tied to deadlines. Republicans in the House are anticipating she’s going to have to negotiate with them in order to get a funding bill out of the House.

MS. WOODRUFF:  And I talked to a Democrat outside of Washington over the weekend, Ed Rendell, governor of Pennsylvania, who says the Democrats can’t do this game of chicken, because that, he said, the blink vs.  no blink, yes that’s the choice.  But he said if they do that, the Democrats aren’t going to win in the long run.  He said what they ought to do is say, “OK, we’re going to give you the money for the war, but we are going to have—with a new president in the White House—a strategy to end this war.” And he said that way the Democrats can pull this out.

MR. RUSSERT:  Chuck Todd, what do the Democratic presidential candidates who are in the Senate do when Harry Reid steps forward and says, “OK, up or down vote, date certain for withdrawal?  Senator Clinton, Senator Obama, Senator Biden, Senator Dodd, how do you vote?”

MR. TODD:  Well, first of all, Chris Dodds already wants to be a co-sponsor, so we know where Dodd’s going to be.  He’s going to be right there with him. I think they all end up voting for this thing.  They all have to vote date certain.  And, and the person that’s going to be the most scrutiny on this is going to be Hillary Clinton because she—you get the sense that that’s the last thing, you know, she, she always gives off this sense of, “Look, I’ve been on the other side of this, I’ve seen—I’ve seen it from the president’s perspective.  Don’t, don’t let Congress get too into the weeds, into the details on this.” And I think it’s going to be a hard vote for her to do, but politically she has no choice.

MR. GREGORY:  I’m not so sure that she...

MR. TODD:  She has to...

MR. GREGORY:  I’m not so sure that they’ll all support it.  I think it will become a real fight over language, deadlines vs.  goals.  And I think they—some Democrats think there may be room for negotiation, which the—which the, the White House has expressed, that they wouldn’t rule out negotiations over some kind of goal for withdrawal if conditions permit.  And that’s the difficulty.

MS. O’BEIRNE:  Because the, the Democrats seem to think that they have public opinion at their back on this, they seem to think this is a mainstream position to set firm dates for withdrawal.  But the Baker-Hamilton Group was, was specifically opposed to this.

MR. GREGORY:  Right.

MS. O’BEIRNE:  The N.I.E., the National Intelligence Estimate, said it’s a terrible idea.  Our commanders on the ground, of course, say it’s a terrible idea.  And last fall, during the elections, Harry Reid was saying, “We will not cut off funds for the Iraq war.” Public opinion polls, of course, as Judy said, do show the public enormously frustrated and pessimistic, but they also show that they don’t favor denying funds for this surge.

MR. RUSSERT:  Let’s talk about the president and his own feelings about the war.  I thought he was quite revealing on Wednesday when he acknowledged this.

(Videotape, Wednesday)

PRES. GEORGE W. BUSH:  The American people are weary of this war.  They’re wondering whether or not we can succeed.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT:  And what compounded that was Matthew Dowd, one of the president’s close advisers in the 2004 race, gave an interview with The New York Times, and this is what he said:  “Looking back, [Former Bush chief campaign strategist Matthew] Dowd now says his faith in Mr.  Bush was misplaced.

“In a wide-ranging interview, Mr.  Dowd expressed his disappointment in Mr. Bush’s leadership.

“He criticized the president as failing to call the nation to a shared sense of sacrifice at a time of war, failing to reach across the political divide to build consensus and ignoring the will of the people on Iraq.  He said that Mr. Bush still approached governing with a ‘my way or the highway’ mentality reinforced by a shrinking circle of trusted aides.

“‘I really like him, which is probably why I’m so disappointed in things.  ... I think he’s become more, in my view, secluded and bubbled in.’ ...

“He said he clung to the hope that Mr.  Bush would get back to his Texas-style of governing if he won [re-election].  “But he” was—“saw no change after the 2004 victory.  ‘I had finally come to the conclusion that maybe all these things ...  do add up.’” “‘That it’s not the same, it’s not the” same “person I thought.’”

The president, asked about that, responded this way on Tuesday:

(Videotape, Tuesday)

PRES. BUSH:  First of all, I respect Matthew.  I’ve known him for a while. As you mentioned, he was a integral part of my 2004 campaign.  I have not talked to Matthew about his concerns.  Nevertheless, I understand his anguish over war, understand that this is an emotional issue for Matthew, as it is a lot of other people in our country.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT:  David, what does this tell us?

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