‘Meet the Press’ transcript for July 29, 2007

Offscreen Voice:  But he...

MR. RUSSERT:  Let me follow that up, and then open it wide open here.  The Miami Herald is what you’re referring to, John, where Barack Obama, the day before the debate, said he would meet with Chavez of Venezuela under certain conditions.  Then, however, an interview Hillary Clinton with—gave to Keith Olbermann back in January surfaced, and let me show that and then come back and talk to everybody.  Here we go.

(Videotape, January 23, 2007)

MR. KEITH OLBERMANN:  Would you reach out immediately to the Syrians and the Iranians, even with the tensions between this country and Iran?

SEN. CLINTON:  Absolutely.  I don’t see it as a sign of weakness, I see it as a sign of strength.  You know, our president will not talk to people he considers bad.  Well, there are a lot of bad actors in the world, and you don’t make peace with your friends.  You’ve got to deal with your enemies, your opponents, people whose interests diverge from yours.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT:  Reach out immediately?  Absolutely.  Not saying precisely that she’d meet with a foreign leader...

MR. EUGENE ROBINSON:  Right.

MR. RUSSERT:  ...but she would negotiate with Iran and Syria.

MR. ROBINSON:  Right.  So it’s, it’s close.  And like everything in this fight, that could be spun either way, and, and she can interpret it however she wants.  I think what’s really interesting about this fight, and, and I think the Obama people seem to now be having so much fun with it, is that it allows Obama to talk about an area that was seen as a potential real weakness for him, foreign policy.  He gets to, to, to get in some blows on foreign policy, to say, “No, I meant, I meant to say what I said and this is why.” So in addition to portraying himself as the agent of change, I think the more he talks about foreign policy, the theory would be, the more people will be comfortable with him as a foreign policy president.

MR. RUSSERT:  And the most important thing is he can say, “She voted for the war and I was against it.”

MR. ROBINSON:  Exactly.

MS. ANDREA MITCHELL:  I think, I think that’s the issue that he now sees as an opening and that’s why he keeps—he’s the one who, after she first escalated in that newspaper interview in Iowa, he’s the one who has kept it going and he’s the one who spoke to it at a rally, which is a real escalation, and agreed to come out and do that interview with us, which was the first time either of them had been actually on camera speaking to it, which brings it to a new level of force on television.  And I think it’s because he sees it as a way to re-emphasize with the primary voters, especially in Iowa and New Hampshire, that she voted to authorize the war.  So this is...

MR. HARWOOD:  Because she had blurred that distinction.

MS. MITCHELL:  Exactly.  She had blurred that distinction partly because he had been reluctant to pick the fight.  He had really been hanging back.  There was some concern that he wasn’t enough—scrappy enough, really, to fight and to win and to take on Republicans in a general election.  And here he’s getting engaged.

I think initially, Dan, you’re, you’re absolutely right.  At first they realized this was a mistake, that he had opened up another wound on foreign policy experience.  But he turned it to his advantage and then jumped in to try to attack her on the war.

MR. RUSSERT:  Then why did Hillary Clinton, the next day, if she, in fact, had won the first round, continue it by saying Obama was naive and irresponsible?

MS. MITCHELL:  Because they thought that they had won.  They really thought that they had scored after that debate.  By, again...

MR. RUSSERT:  Then why pile on with those, with those words?

MS. MITCHELL:  Because they were—they are an aggressive, tough, fighting campaign.  There is no machine like the Clinton war machine.

MR. BALZ:  I, I think that was not planned.  I am not convinced that they had a plan that she would go out and say—and, and accuse Obama of being irresponsible and naive in a newspaper interview.  I think she freelanced that.

MR. RUSSERT:  Which is interesting, because other times we have seen Hillary Clinton saying, “I didn’t stay home and bake cookies,” “I’m no Tammy Wynette,” “This is a right-wing conspiracy.” Sometimes, when she’s freelancing, words come out that really do draw a firm line...

MS. MITCHELL:  I think—well, I don’t know.  I think there was a...(unintelligible).

MR. HARWOOD:  (Unintelligible)...do it for the first time in this campaign.

MR. ROBINSON:  Yeah.

MR. CHUCK TODD:  Two things I think about this thing that I think are going to be important for us three months from now is, is, one, it’s—is it got—Obama got his sea legs.  You saw him yesterday in Iowa, and he, he hit her again.  He hit, you know, talked about—he’s just comfortable, suddenly, hitting her.

MS. MITCHELL:  Absolutely.

MR. TODD:  It’s almost like a boxer who takes the first punch from the champion and realizes, “Oh, I can stay in the ring.  I can do this.” And so I think the fact that he got comfortable starting to hit her a little bit should be something that gives the Clinton camp a little bit of pause...

MR. RUSSERT:  We’ll show you...

MR. TODD:  ...and why, ultimately, Obama’s got to feel like he got the best of her, even if, frankly, in a general election, he may have made a mistake.

MR. RUSSERT:  We’ll show you how comfortable Senator Obama got.  This is a quote from the Chicago Sun-Times about foreign policy.  “Tuesday night,” it says, that the “foreign policy judgment,” Obama said, “was the best of all” the “candidates.”

“At an off-the-record session sponsored by Time-Warner in New York,” “‘One thing I’m very confident about is my judgment in foreign policy is, I believe, better than any other candidate in this race, Republican or Democrat.’

“‘And I don’t base that simply on the fact that I was right on the war in Iraq.  But if you look at how I approached the problem, what I was drawing on was a set of experience that come from a life of living overseas, being able to see the world through the eyes of people outside our borders.’”

MS. MITCHELL:  I...

MR. ROBINSON:  Well, you know, he’s, he’s, he’s not a shy and retiring person, really.  I mean, he, he has a lot of self-confidence.  He believes that he’s a smart guy and can lead the nation.  You know, one, one thing I’m curious about is, is whether this will have any impact on the polls and how people in the nation are, are—see the substance of this question, to the extent there is a, a substance.  Do—and I...

MS. MITCHELL:  Well, first thing...

MR. TODD:  Well, substance is lost.  I mean...

MR. ROBINSON:  But I wonder, I wonder if people aren’t receptive to a prospective president who says, “You know, the old kind of traditional foreign policy wise man way of looking at things, you know, ‘We can’t meet with foreign leaders because we could be used for propaganda purposes,’ guess what? We’re losing the propaganda war, OK?  It’s not like we’re doing that well right now.” So...

MS. MITCHELL:  The Edwards people—the Edwards people actually think that the, that the polling on this will help them.  It’s already helped them in Iowa and other places where people don’t like to see this kind of infighting in Washington, and that that will actually be the bounce for them.

MR. RUSSERT:  But, but pick up on the, on the big picture.  If Obama is able to say, “All the wise men told you to vote for the war...”

MR. ROBINSON:  Mm-hmm.

MR. RUSSERT:  “...that it had to be done that way.”

MR. ROBINSON:  Right.

MR. RUSSERT:  “I was the one candidate that—who didn’t.”

MR. ROBINSON:  Right.

MR. RUSSERT:  Dennis Kucinich will say he did, but...

MR. ROBINSON:  Exactly.

MR. RUSSERT:  “And, and that I believe that fundamental change means reaching out and talking to other leaders.  I grew up in Indonesia, my father’s from Kenya.  I have a different perspective than those who, in effect, grew up in Washington.” Will that work?

MR. ROBINSON:  And when you talk—well, when you talk to him, I think this is something he, he sincerely believes, that, that his biography is, is an important—well, obviously it’s an important part of who he is—but an important part of how he would approach the job, how he would be seen around the world.  He thinks that’s a—that would be a real advantage for him as president and for the, for the nation.  And so I, you know, I think you’ll hear more of that.

MR. BROWNSTEIN:  Well, look, we have real crosscurrents in public opinion right now.  Obviously there’s enormous dissatisfaction with the direction of the country.  There’s a real palpable desire for change that is broad and deep across the electorate.  On the other hand, there is a sense that these are dangerous times, and that puts a premium on steadiness and experience and being able to be judicious in, in handling threats.  So you, you have these—you have these twin elements that are there in the public.  Senator Clinton and Senator Obama speak to very different aspects of those that, really, almost the yin and yang of those desires.

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