‘Meet the Press’ transcript for June 3, 2007

MR. RUSSERT:  ...psychologically to a...

MR. CARVILLE:  Right.  It would.

MR. RUSSERT:  ...vice president in the Clinton administration.

MR. CARVILLE:  And I, I, I—it would.  It’s a risk.  But when, once you want to be president, the, winning an Academy Award, it’s not what—that’s it.  It won’t go away.

MR. SHRUM:  I think it’s even tougher because he thinks he was elected president.

MR. CARVILLE:  Yeah.

MR. SHRUM:  I do, too.  But he has a sense of perspective about this.  I write in the book about the day before the 2004 election when Gore’s on the phone with David Morehouse, who worked for both Gore and Kerry, and Morehouse is going through the polling, he’s saying, “We’re going to win this state, going to win this state.  We’re going to win Florida by three or four points,” and Gore pauses and says, “Well, you know, that’d be good.  That’d be good. But you know what would be even better?  If it was close and they caught Bush trying to cheat and they put him in jail.” And then he laughed.  I mean, he’s got a sense of perspective about this.  I think he knows that he’s gone from being a politician to being a prophet, and he’s having more impact on the world than a lot of presidents have had.  That’s one place where I disagree with James.  I think if he sees an opening, he’ll be tempted.  And if he runs, he’ll run, I predict, in a very unorthodox way without taking polls and every spot will just be him talking to cameras.

MR. RUSSERT:  Without consultants?

MR. SHRUM:  Yeah, probably.  Yep.

MR. MURPHY:  Oh, we’ve got to do something about that.

MR. SHRUM:  I, I don’t mind, I’m retired.

MR. CARVILLE:  He should run.

MR. RUSSERT:  But let me go back, let me go back to that, it’s an important point, Bob.  Because in your book, Bob Shrum, you have a scene involving Al Gore and consultants and advice.  And here it is:  “Gore was determined to give a blunt speech on global warming and to do it in Michigan.  Just before a rally, Gore told me” “we all were against it.  He was right.  Gore announced to me that he didn’t care, he was going to say his piece anyway.  He ordered me to confer with his chief environmental adviser.  When I reached her on the cell phone, she said was Al out of his mind?  This was the nuttiest thing she’d ever heard; he’d lose Michigan.  She’d rather have a president that did something about global warming than a defeated candidate who’d given some” GD damned “‘noble speech’ about it.  When I reported her verdict to a disbelieving candidate, he phoned her, listened for a couple of minutes, and then he did budge.  He said to me with resignation, ‘Well, I guess that’s that.’”

That was Al Gore in 2000.  His signature issue of global warming, he decided not to give that speech because, politically, he was advised it would hurt him in Michigan.  In 2008, what would he do?

MR. SHRUM:  Oh, he’d talk about global warming all the time.  Look, what really happened in 2000 was he wanted to give that speech very early.  And it is true that people kept pushing back against it because the issue wasn’t the same as it is today, and there was a fear that we would lose Michigan.  But when he announced, I think, sort of to tell us, send us a message that he was very frustrated by what we’d done, that he was going to give that speech and he was going to give that speech in Michigan.  It wasn’t just his environmental adviser.  I mean, Chuck Campion, the Boston pol we’d sent in to help save Michigan, called me and said, “I might as well get back on the plane.  I did want to win the election.  I confess to that.”

MR. RUSSERT:  But you think in 2008 it’d be...

MR. SHRUM:  The speech would be given early.  You’d never even get to...

MR. RUSSERT:  In Michigan?

MR. SHRUM:  Well, no, he’d be going—actually, that speech could be given today in Michigan.

MR. MURPHY:  And he ought to do that if he runs.  And he ought to run.  Why not?  President of the United States.  Because the new unplugged Gore, while it might be wild and crazy and totally blow up on the pad, would be interesting and authentic, and this could be a year where authenticity is very, very important.  That would be nice in American politics.

MR. RUSSERT:  You raise Barack Obama and John Edwards, you thought having an advantage over Hillary Clinton.

MR. MURPHY:  Mm-hmm.

MR. RUSSERT:  I want to bring up a quote that Senator Obama has made to New York magazine, also wrote about it in his book, when he talks about the new kind of politics.  And this is what he says:  “When you watch Clinton vs. Gingrich or Gore vs. Bush or Kerry vs. Bush, you feel like these are fights that were taking place back in dorm rooms in the sixties.  Vietnam, civil rights,” “sexual revolution, the role of government—all that stuff has just been playing itself out, and I think people sort of feel like, OK, let’s not re-litigate the sixties 40 years later.” Is that a way for Obama to lump Hillary Clinton and George Bush together, saying...

MR. MURPHY:  Well, that’s what he’s trying to do, absolutely.

MR. RUSSERT:  ...every election since 1980, there’s been a Bush or Clinton on the ticket.

MR. MURPHY:  Right.

MR. RUSSERT:  Let’s move beyond that.

MR. MURPHY:  He’s totally running change, new kind of politics, which is both the strength and the weakness of his campaign.  The strength of it is, in a wrong-track election like we have, change is very attractive.  And in these change elections, what candidates love to talk about the most is process, you know, how we’re going to fix the broken system in Washington—whether it’s Wallace talking about the pointy-headed bureaucrats, or Obama, the new generational politics.  It’s all the same stew.  The problem is eventually you get down to meat and potatoes, Democratic primary politics, and when you get closer in January to when this will be decided, and people want to know where, where are you on the issues, where’s my grease for my interest group, I’m with the teacher’s union.  That space ship stuff about the future’s great, but what about our members?  And that’s where a candidacy like Obama’s has got to have a second act, and sometimes—Paul Tsongas, for example—they fall apart.  And that, that’ll be the test.

MR. SHRUM:  Tim, can I, can I add one thing...

MR. RUSSERT:  Please.

MR. SHRUM:  ...on behalf of Hillary Clinton?  And I think Obama actually said this in Selma, and on reflection—I like him very much, I admire and respect him, think he very well may be the nominee—it’s a good thing we litigated the ‘60s or he wouldn’t be running for president today.

MR. RUSSERT:  James Carville, when you look at this, however, does—is there a point to this, that there’s a fatigue for both the Bushes and the Clintons and let’s try something different?

MR. CARVILLE:  Yes.  And, and I think that—and, and I think that the Clintons are very aware of that.  And I think Senator Obama’s very aware of that.  And you have a—just a classic confrontation that’s getting ready to take place in the Democratic Party.  This is all inspiration and all perspiration.  This is, this is to set a Protestant work ethic against somebody that’s coming in with, with, with something new.  I think that if—I think that Senator Clinton is going to have to, as Mike said, address the future.  I think she’s starting to do that.  They, they—but, but, but she does things in a very methodical, thought out way.  That’s her nature.  She’s a, she’s a very precise person.  Her campaign is, is a reflection of that.  I think they got to be happy with where they are so far.  But Obama keeps pushing the envelope.  And I think when the second quarter fund-raising number comes out, it’s going—Obama’s number’s going to shock people.  It’s going to be something that we’ve never seen before in American politics, if what I’m told by, by, by all sides is true.

MR. RUSSERT:  And the crowds he’s generating.

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