‘Meet the Press’ transcript for July 15, 2007

MR. MURPHY:  No, no, no, I’m using a Hollywood—I figured Democrats, Hollywood—a dated Hollywood reference here.  No, but it’s a problem.  He takes up all the energy, and he makes a change election about going backwards, which is death for her, I think.  So it’s a very hard thing for them to wiggle out of, just like McCain and immigration.  Sometimes the rules of gravity are stronger than all your clever campaign strategies.  But for all the advantages of Clinton, ultimately it shrinks her, makes her less, and it refocuses the campaign backward in a forward year.  I think it’s a terrific problem.

And the one—real quickly—the one metric I’m watching, Internet fund-raising. Because that’s where money is reaching out trying to find candidates rather than arms being twisted the old way to bring money in.  And that’s where Obama is killing.  It is a metric of real political strength for him.

MR. RUSSERT:  Bob Novak, there also seems to be a real subtle message—subliminal, nonetheless real—in the Barack Obama message, and that is it’s time to turn the page, 28 years of two families controlling the presidency.

MR. NOVAK:  That’s another thing.  That is something that everybody talks about.  And you know, talk about nostalgia.  It’s hard for a lot of these people to believe this, but there’s, there’s not that much nostalgia for Bill Clinton.  I just, I just find people who aren’t Democratic professional politicians, who, you know, are sorry they’ve had eight years of Republicans, they don’t really yearn for Bill Clinton.  The thing...

MR. RUSSERT:  But he does—he’s very popular in all the polls.

MR. NOVAK:  A lot of people don’t want him back, though, for a third—for a third term, and I think it’s very dangerous to call this a third term of Bill Clinton.

There’s one other thing.  The morale of the Republicans...

MR. RUSSERT:  Who’s done that?  Who’s called it the third term?

MR. NOVAK:  Me.

MR. RUSSERT:  Nice, nice try, Novak.

MR. NOVAK:  There’s...

MR. RUSSERT:  Consider the source.

MR. NOVAK:  Republicans are, are very pessimistic about 2008, when you talk to them off the record.  They don’t see how they can win this thing.  And then you—they think for a minute, and only the Democratic Party, with everything in their favor, would say that, OK, this is a year either to have a woman or an African-American to break precedent, to do things the country’s never done before, and it gives the Republicans hope.

MR. HUNT:  You know, I, I have a different take.  I don’t think the Bill Clinton thing is that big a deal at this time.  I think if you look at these two front-runners, and you look at over the last six months, Tim, they both have probably exceeded expectations.  Go back to January 15^th.  If you said six months from now Hillary Clinton will have minimized her Iraq problem, she will have raised over $50 million, she would have done better than probably anyone in the joint forums, she would be cleaning up with political endorsements, you’d say it’s all over, she’s won.

But if you look at Obama and say a neophyte who has made almost no big mistakes, as Mike Murphy said is raising money like no one in the history of American politics, he can come back to it.  He’s still got all the energy, all the buzz in the party, you’d say he’s won the thing.  I think these two big political armies is like Gettysburg, July 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd, 1863.  We’re going to—they’re suddenly going to join in a succession of quick primaries in January, and no one’s sure who’s going to win.

MR. SHRUM:  And in January, people are going to get up and they’re going to say does she stand for change enough?  And on the other hand, they’re going to say does he have enough substance to go with the excitement?

MR. MURPHY:  Exactly.

MR. SHRUM:  And if the answer to the second question is yes, he could take off.

MR. RUSSERT:  Change, change vs.  experience.

MR. HUNT:  He’s within striking distance, clearly.

MR. MURPHY:  Yes.

MR. RUSSERT:  Let me turn to “The Prince of Darkness:  50 Years of Reporting in Washington.”

Offscreen Voice:  There he is.

MR. RUSSERT:  Why are you the “Prince of Darkness”?

MR. NOVAK:  A reporter, old reporter for Washington Post at that time, John J. Lindsay, said—we used to cover the Senate together and talk about things, and he thought I was so gloomy about the future of Western civilization, I was all of about 28 years old then, that he thought I was the Prince of Darkness. And the name stuck.  A lot of people call me the Prince of Darkness, though, because I’m for small government, low taxes and individual economic freedom. And of course, a lot of people—even a couple of them at this table—think that makes you the Prince of Darkness.

MR. RUSSERT:  You, you...

MR. MURPHY:  No, I just think it makes you wrong.

MR. RUSSERT:  You begin the book, as you might expect, a discussion of the whole Valerie Plame situation.  Let me read a little bit and talk about it.

“I was ushered into [Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage’s] office promptly at 3 p.m.  [on July 8, 2003].  for my visit.  I assumed, however, that what Armitage said would not be attributed to him but would not be off the record.  That is, I could write about information he gave me, but would not identify him by name.  I then asked Armitage a question.  Why would the CIA send Joseph Wilson on the mission to Niger?  ‘Well,’ Armitage replied, ‘you know his wife works at CIA, and she suggested that he be sent to Niger.’ ‘His wife works at’” the “‘CIA?’ I asked.  ‘Yeah, in counterproliferation,’” he, he said.  “He mentioned her by first name, Valerie.  Armitage smiled and said:  ‘That’s real Evans and Novak, isn’t it?’” Suggesting a green light to print it, in your mind.

MR. NOVAK:  That’s right, of course.

MR. RUSSERT:  Then you go on to say in the book, “Senior White House adviser Karl Rove returned my call late that afternoon,” July 8^th, 2003, the same day.

“I mentioned” “I had heard that Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA in the counterproliferation section and that she had suggested Wilson be sent to Niger.  I distinctly remember Rove’s reply:  ‘Oh, you know that, too.’ Rove and I also discussed other aspects of Wilson’s mission, but since he never has disclosed them publicly, neither have I.” So you considered Rove’s comments, “Oh, you know that, too,” as a confirmation?

MR. NOVAK:  Yes.  And of course, there’s also a third source, and that was the public relations man at the CIA, Bill Harlow, who, who admitted, who confirmed that she worked in the counterproliferation division.  But he said that she didn’t suggest the—that her husband go.  That’s—I think that was an incorrect information he gave me, but I I also put that in the column, that a source from the CIA said he was—she was not suggest—he did—she did not suggest her husband make the mission.

MR. RUSSERT:  In hindsight, should you have identified Valerie Plame as a CIA agent?

MR. NOVAK:  There was no indication by, by the official spokesman for the CIA or anybody else that anybody was put in danger, that—I suddenly didn’t get a direct call from George Tenet, the CIA director, who I knew.  And if he wanted to stop me from doing it, he could’ve, so I, I saw there was no pressure from me.  They asked me not, not to use her name, but didn’t say that it was anybody in danger or there was any security violation as a result.

MR. RUSSERT:  The president said early on in this that if anyone broke the law, that he would deal with it.  And now he’s saying, “Well, I wish that someone had come forward and raised their hand and said this had happened, but let’s move on.”

MR. NOVAK:  Well, Mr. Armitage did come forward.  He, he—before a special prosecutor was even named, he had—after a story appeared in which I said there was not a partisan gunslinger who gave me the information, he identified himself to the Justice Department.  So they—that did come forward.  And, of course, the wrong investigation by Mr. Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor, came after they knew that—who had been the leaker and had made a decision, obviously, that no law had been broken.  Because nobody was ever pros—Mr. Armitage was not prosecuted, nobody else was prosecuted.

MR. RUSSERT:  Al Hunt, what have we learned from all of this?

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