‘Meet the Press’ transcript for June 17, 2007

MR. RUSSERT: Another issue where the left and the right converged to bring about its defeat, that may be back to life a bit, is the immigration bill. Byron York, the president working feverishly to get his immigration reform bill passed.

MR. YORK: Yeah.

MR. RUSSERT: As the former governor of Texas, he understands this policy and the politics. In his mind, if the Hispanic vote is written off by the Republican Party for years to come, they could join blacks in being an overwhelmingly subgroup in our society supporting the Democratic Party, which would be devastating to the Democrats long term.

MR. YORK: On this, he is fighting his base and fighting them very hard. The latest, the latest vehicle for this is this new plan to appropriate, in a separate bill, $4.4 billion for additional border security. But what, what the conservative opponents of this bill are saying is, “That’s great,” but they’re almost saying, “Don’t show us the money. We don’t care about the money. We want to see actual results in increasing border security.” So Jim DeMint, for example, the South Carolina Republican, says, “We need to do this in phases. First we’ll do border security, then we’ll talk about the path to legalization,” while the president insists that it has to be all in one ball. The question is, have any minds been changed from a few weeks ago when the bill died, and nobody knows that right now.

MR. RUSSERT: Will the president get it?

MR. DIONNE: I think there’s an outside shot. What I think is in the end there are probably 60 votes in the Senate for some combination of legalization of the 12 million, plus tougher security.

But the politics of this are very complicated and I think for a lot of conservatives it’s not only that a lot of them oppose this on principle, which they do, but this has become a vehicle for conservatives to express many of the same frustration that liberals and moderates feel about the president. They can look at border security, attack the administration’s incompetence by saying “They haven’t controlled the border.” They use this issue to talk about economic and cultural unease, and a lot of Republicans, particularly downscale Republicans, I feel. And the country is genuinely divided on immigration. There have been a ton of polls. Your own, I think, had a—asked a very interesting question: “Does immigration help our country”? Fifty-six percent. “Does it hurt”? Forty-four percent. On a question that closely divided it’s really hard to get a comprehensive bill like this one.

MS. O’BEIRNE: But the NBC poll didn’t show divided opinion on the merits of this bill. There was a reason why the grand compromisers wanted to push this through really pretty quickly. The longer it hung out there, the more opposition has grown. People have been informed about it more. It delayed through Memorial Day. Time is not on its side. So it’s really a broad cross-section based on the polls. They—the typical public thinks immigration reform means secure the border and reduce the level of illegal immigration. And what critics charge that this bill won’t really deliver on promises about border security and will provide a magnet—just as the ‘86 amnesty did—to, to increase illegal immigration, it puts its defenders in a really awkward spot.

MR. ROBINSON: But one—one interesting—another interesting thing from the NBC poll is that most Americans do no believe it’s realistic, for example, to deport—just talk about deporting 12 million people who are here illegally. So there is this sense of realism in the, in the country about—if not a desire to then take the next step and say, “Well, OK, let’s legalize these people.” But at least there’s the recognition that they’re not all going to be rounded up and, and shipped home, you know at anytime, and certainly not any time soon.

MR. YORK: Right. But if you look at the specific measure in this bill in this poll, support for imposing new fines on businesses, 74 percent; support for the fence, 65 percent; requiring all those who apply to be citizens to learn English, 89 percent; support for allowing illegals to get an automatic visa if they pay $5,000, 30 percent. So, I mean, the difference is quite striking in this poll.

MR. RUSSERT: Byron, does the White House think they’ll get it?

MR. YORK: Yes, they think they do, in part because when the bill was defeated the last time, a number of Republicans voted to stop it on the grounds that Republicans weren’t being allowed to offer enough amendments, a process reason. So that this time perhaps there’ll be enough Republicans who feel they can have their voice heard and let the bill go forward.

MR. RUSSERT: Two others issues confronting the president and this is how Robert Novak, the conservative columnist, framed them: “What can a lame duck president fighting an unpopular war—the fate also of Harry Truman and Lyndon” “Johnson in their closing months—do about this? No much, but two possibilities are talked about in Republican circles: let” Alberto “Gonzales” the attorney general,”go, and pardon” Scooter “Libby. That might drop Bush’s approval ratings even lower, but it sure would hearten his base.”

Kate O’Beirne:

MS. O’BEIRNE: Well I’m—his approval ratings at the moment I don’t think would drop. It’s—it could just reflect Scooter Libby’s friends and family at this point who might—who might stay—who might hang in there with him. I wouldn’t expect—I don’t think the Alberto Gonzales controversy is affecting the president’s poll ratings. I don’t know that this U.S. attorney controversy has caught on in that respect. And it is true that there’s something liberating about being below freezing level in the polls, I suppose. And it is the president’s base. It’s very much his base. And, and ironically, the issues come together. We just talked about with respect to Iraq, those members of Congress who are most apt to stick with him on Iraq are the ones who feel most strongly about immigration. They see this as sort of a fratricide the president has sort of launched. So anything he could do to help with his base, to remind people—it’s like a bad marriage at the moment, Tim. At the moment, the base is having a big fight with the president about a big issue: immigration. But it’s not just about immigration. It’s about all problems in this relationship. Right away, you hear Republicans say, “And another thing, Harriet Miers and No Child Left Behind and prescription drug benefits.”

MR. RUSSERT: So would a pardon...

MR. DIONNE: (Unintelligible)...in this is very good.

MR. RUSSERT: Would pardoning Scooter Libby help that?

MS. O’BEIRNE: It certainly would help with his conservative supporters who had, who had long objected to what they see as politicized prosecution and I think they would give President Bush credit for being a stand-up guy who stood by a loyal White House staffer.

MR. RUSSERT: Also, there’s been discussion of a middle step, not a pardon, called a respite. What is that?

MS. O’BEIRNE: Well, the president—we call it, it’s pardon power, but of course it’s a plenary power. It’s an executive clemency power. The president, through this constitutional authority, can do anything along the way. For instance, a respite is possible. The president has the authority—previous presidents have done the same thing—to suspend the sentence for the moment. He still lets the legal process run its course, wait till the appeal is over, but meanwhile the president would have the authority to see that Scooter Libby did not serve a jail term as long as his appeal was pending. There are things you can do short of pardon.

MR. RUSSERT: A get out of jail free card.

MS. O’BEIRNE: Well, suspended for the moment, and then wait for the, for the appeal to run its course.

MR. RUSSERT: E.J. Dionne, you wrote this in your column: “The Republican presidential candidates have two time frames to think about: their need to win conservative support in the nomination battle now and the general election imperative to break with what is looking like a discredited presidency. Taking a stand on a pardon [for]” Scooter “[Libby] forces an awkward and immediate choice between those objectives.”

MR. DIONNE: Indeed. That’s if, right now, in the conservative base, which plays a big role in the Republican primaries, as Kate says, there’s a lot of sentiment for pardoning Scooter Libby. But here, you would be a Republican facing an election in the fall where you tied yourself to an administration that could be perceived as—and I think correctly—as letting its friend off the hook when he lied to an investigator to protect other people in the administration, is just not where you want to be. And it’s not where President Bush wants to be. This is a terrible choice for him, because if he doesn’t pardon Libby, or give him a respite or something, the few remaining people in the country who really support him among the conservatives, are going to be furious at him. If he does move to pardon Libby, or give him some relief, lots of other people, most of the rest of the people, are going to be mad at him, including Democrats he’s leaning on now to pass a few things, like immigration. So this is about the worst of all possible choices for the president.

MR. RUSSERT: Here’s the latest poll ratings on the president, Gene Robinson. He has a 29 percent approval, 66 disapproval. Why not take a shot?

MR. ROBINSON: Mm-hmm. Well, you know, as Kate said, below freezing. I mean, he’s not going to—you know, he’s—that’s as low as he’s ever been, lower than he’s ever been.

I, I think the Democrats must be saying bring it on, you know. If he, if he does pardon Scooter Libby, I think it’d be a great issue for them to run on. On the...

MR. RUSSERT: By the way, the Democrats who ran—took control of Congress, here’s the latest favorable/unfavorable of Congress: 23 percent approval, 64 disapproval. So things all aren’t peachy for the Democrats running Congress.

MR. ROBINSON: No, they’re—no, they aren’t. You know, I don’t know if that reflects the Democratic leadership, Harry Reid’s sometimes intemperate remarks. I think it’s more just dissatisfaction with, with the city, with the way things are going, the feeling—you know, that, that question in your poll, are things on the right track or the wrong track? The Democrats came into office with very high expectations, some of which they can’t deliver on, because they don’t have 60 votes in the Senate, and—to override, override vetoes and get anything through.

MR. RUSSERT: And they haven’t stopped the war.

MR. ROBINSON: And they haven’t stopped the war.

MR. DIONNE: Well, I mean, I think, I think that’s key. The Democrats have lost ground in two completely different areas. Liberals who wanted the war stopped—I think it was unrealistic to expect Congress to stop it, but nonetheless, they’re mad now. And a lot of other voters who are not necessarily liberals who wanted action on that whole series of domestic, whole series of domestic issues the Democrats brought up. Yes, they got minimum wage, but they haven’t passed that. So they—the war will take care of itself one way or the other, and they’ve really got to act on that affirmative agenda before the year is out.

MR. RUSSERT: Byron York, bottom line on a pardon for Scooter Libby? What happens?

MR. YORK: Well, the fact is, the White House has shown no inclination at all to pardon Libby. They were hoping that all of this would come later in the president’s term, that he could essentially do it on the way out the door. The thing that has triggered all of this is Judge Reggie Walton, the judge in the case, deciding that Libby had to go, go to jail now, rather than stay free pending his appeal. That’s what has caused this problem, and I think that we’re likely to see Libby go to jail within six weeks or so.

MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn to the presidential race. Here’s the latest national poll for the Democrats: In June, Hillary Clinton, 39; Barack Obama, 25; Edwards, 15. In April, she had just a 5 point lead. Clearly, the two debates have benefitted her. We have shown polls in recent weeks in Iowa, where it was a very close race, Edwards, Obama, Clinton. A poll last week, where Clinton was ahead in New Hampshire. South Carolina—here’s a new poll out this very morning. Look at this: Barack Obama, 34; Hillary Clinton, 25; John Edwards, 12.

Gene Robinson, you know a lot about that state.

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