‘Meet the Press’ transcript for Aug. 12, 2007

MR. LAUER:  ..on the job of rewriting the baseball record book, would you put an asterisk next to Barry Bonds’ home run record?

SEN. McCAIN:  As a baseball fan, yes.

MR. LAUER:  Tainted record.

SEN. McCAIN:  Well, I—I’d—it’s, it’s sort of inappropriate for me, but in my personal opinion as a life-long baseball fan, an asterisk.

MR. LAUER:  All right, hard call.  If you were out of politics tomorrow and you bought a radio station, would you put Don Imus back on the air?

SEN. McCAIN:  I’d, I’d give him a chance.  I believe in redemption.  I believe that people make mistakes in life, and I think—I believe in redemption.

(End videotape)

MR. GREGORY:  Michael Duffy, I think what struck a lot of people is he actually answered the questions and just went right at—is that—is that some of the straight talk express—the straight-talking John McCain that may have been missing from his campaign before now?

MR. DUFFY:  Well, that’s not a hard call, yeah, that’s exactly what’s been missing.  And, you know, it’s hard to find a lot of smart money right now, David, that says McCain will come back from where he is.  He’s, he’s having trouble raising money, his performance in some of the recent forums and debates has been a little listless, and he’s heading towards single digits. And it’s hard, particularly in the Republican primaries, to reverse that.  But this isn’t—this Republican field is so—has its own flaws and is, is weak enough and is unusual enough because it tends to be—it looks a little more centrist than it typically has been.  It’s, it’s, it’s not impossible that he couldn’t find some moment, lighting could strike if not—if not strike McCain, it could strike the others and maybe strike them dead, you know, that, that McCain, my instincts says he doesn’t come back but it is possible he does. This field is weak enough that perhaps even Judge Crater could come back again.

MR. GREGORY:  But, Margaret, do you see it way?

MS. CARLSON:  You know, his, his talent is to be a kind of comeback guy,

MR. GREGORY:  Right.

MS. CARLSON:  ...a maverick, an outsider.  So...

MR. GREGORY:  An underdog.

MS. CARLSON:  An underdog.  So he could fight his way back and find who he was.  But he did lose independents, which is who he needs, especially in New Hampshire.  It’s, it’s his bread and butter, and with the walk in the Baghdad market and, and, and the visit to Jerry Falwell, I think he’s lost that to people even like Giuliani who, by the way, made a huge mistake this week saying that he spent more time at Ground Zero than the 9/11 rescue workers, and it, it, it made me see that Giuliani now believes his own rhetoric, that he, he practically, you know, maybe there was a third tower he kept from falling.  That’s how much he’s made 9/11 part of his campaign.

MR. GREGORY:  The, the other factor here, here, of course, is Fred Thompson, who’s not even officially in the race.  And, Byron, you have a cover story for the National Review on Fred Thompson, and this is how you reported a portion of it.  “Altogether, there’s no doubt that Thompson is a solid conservative who would govern as one.  But it’s hard to claim that his positions are terribly different from those of the other conservatives running for the Republican presidential nomination.  Instead, what Thompson is betting on is that he will be a more effective leader than the other guys and that he will be more able to convince ordinary Americans to support his initiatives.  But first he has to convince them to vote for him.” First, he has to get into the race, officially, I guess.  But where, where, where is he distinguishing himself, or where can he distinguish himself?

MR. YORK:  Well, you know, it’s going to be on the issue of leadership.  It’s well-known that when he was in the Senate he wasn’t overly fond of being in the Senate.  And when I asked him to tell me his two or three top accomplishments in the Senate, the first thing he said was, “You mean, besides leaving the Senate?” You know, when you go and hear him talk to donors and to groups, he’ll talk a lot about entitlement reform, about reforming Social Security.  And I said, “Well, you know, George Bush tried that at, at perhaps the strongest point in his presidency.  He’d just been re-elected, he had 55 votes in the Senate and he failed.  So what—you know, makes you think you could do it?” And he said, “Well, that’s where leadership comes in.” So I think he plans to project an image of a, a strong Reaganite Republican leader and not as just another senator running for president.

MR. GREGORY:  But it is difficult, Chuck Todd.  I mean, the, the president had a Republican majority and just come, come off a very strong re-election bid, and Social Security went nowhere largely because of, of the feelings within his own party.

MR. TODD:  It is.  I think what’s fascinating about Thompson is that he is trying to be the Bush Republican.  You know, none of these guys ever—Romney’s trying to say how he’s different from Bush.  Giuliani is trying to show sort of how he’s different from Bush.  Thompson is basically saying, well—and maybe this is the bet they’re making, “Hey, you know what, Bush is still popular with 65, 70 percent of the Republican Party.” Somebody’s got to actually got be the Bush Republican in this race, and Thompson—the more I watch him, the more, the more things he says, he strikes me as that he’s basically saying, “Look, I’m the guy that’s going to be most like George W. Bush compared to these three.”

MR. GREGORY:  Right.  You...

MR. TODD:  And at the end of the day you might actually want that.

MR. GREGORY:  But you don’t hear a lot about George W. Bush in the campaign at this point.  Ron Brownstein wrote in the Los Angeles Times last month about the Bush undertow, as he called it.  This is what he wrote:  “There’s no guarantee that history will repeat itself.  But the weight of experience suggests that Republicans in Congress and in the presidential race are vastly underestimating the challenge of escaping the undertow Bush is creating.  If he cannot recover at least somewhat, or if the party does not separate itself from him more effectively - or both - the GOP may be dragged under.

“Unpopular departing presidents, though, have consistently undercut their party in the next election.  Democrats lost the White House in 1952 and 1968 after Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson saw their approval ratings plummet below 50 percent.”

Mike, that’s going to be hard for a Republican to say, “I can be George W. Bush, just more effective”?

MR. DUFFY:  I think down below all these candidates, the Republican Party has a sense of deep despair about their situation strategically.  You don’t have to probe it too deeply to find it.  Even Thompson’s support, which is, though, for a man who hasn’t gotten into the race, is holding nationally at about 20 percent, some measure of that.  I would bet most of it is a measure of the dissatisfaction with the Republican field.  Thompson hasn’t gotten in yet, he’s sort of a hologram of a candidate, not a candidate yet.  People say he’s conservative, but we haven’t really seen him.  So I think that’s—even, even his candidacy represents the unhappiness with the field.  We’ll see how—whether he can, you know, capture it and make something of it when he—if he gets in.  But there’s no question that this is a party that is—as, as, as I think Huckabee said, is in crisis.

MR. GREGORY:  Go ahead.

MS. CARLSON:  You know, with—Chuck is right.  They aren’t mentioning—the Republican candidates are not mentioning Bush, but they’re not exactly pulling away either.  I mean, 75 percent of Republicans still support Bush-Cheney when you, when you ask that question in polls.  And you wonder who they are, but they’re there.  And so you’re not going to see a huge break, I don’t think, with, with Bush during the primary.  And you talk about the pro-lifers in Iowa being suspicious of Romney.  I think it’s because they’re actually waiting for Senator Thompson to actually get in, who has better credentials, except for representing that pro-choice group, than Romney does.  There’s the—there’s this holding of breath, there’s this suspension...

MR. DUFFY:  Waiting.

MS. CARLSON:  ...waiting, waiting, waiting for Senator Thompson to get in.

MR. GREGORY:  Byron York, do you think that Mitt Romney is campaigning as effectively as he could be?  Is he presenting the real Mitt Romney in the sense of what his experience really suggests when it comes to being a problem solver, being an effective business person, turning around the Salt Lake City Olympics?  Or is he spending more time trying to position himself to, to court the right wing of the party?

MR. YORK:  Yeah, well, there, there—there’s two things.  One, he really is positioning himself as the, as the candidate of change.  I mean, yesterday he said several times, “What we need now is change.  Change begins here in Iowa. And need—we need a government in Washington that can get things done.” And he’s talking about George W. Bush there, there’s no doubt about it, even though he does praise George for keeping the United States safe since September 11^th.  But as far as campaigning correctly, you, you know, there was one instance here in Iowa when he showed a little of his personal self.  He was on with a—one of these radio talk show hosts who was very, very critical of him over the issue of abortion and on the Mormon church.  And he really got kind of feisty.  And the camera kept going during the break in the radio show, and he really began pushing back at people who, you know, who felt that, you know, he didn’t in some ways let his religion play...

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