‘Meet the Press’ transcript for Sept. 2, 2007

MR. MURPHY:  I’m, I’m...

MR. SHRUM:  That is really—that’s spin.  Good spin.

MR. MURPHY:  We’ll be hearing more of that, I think.

MS. MATALIN:  Thank you.  I’m, I’m looking at the clock.  I think James is going to chew it up in the break.

MR. CARVILLE:  Right, right, right.

MR. RUSSERT:  You should know I’ve offered Mayor Giuliani and Governor Romney a full hour on this program to respond.  They’ve not yet accepted.  But I hope they’ll come and make their own case, as well as Mary’s made a case on behalf of Fred Thompson.

Here’s the latest poll.  This is amongst Republicans.  National poll: Giuliani’s at 27; Thompson, who will announce on Thursday, 17; Romney, 15; McCain, 12.  But then asked the question, “Who has the best chance against the Democratic candidate?” Look at that.  Giuliani goes to 38; Thompson, 14; McCain, 13; Romney, 11.  They think Rudy’s a better general election candidate, Mike Murphy.

MR. MURPHY:  Yeah, well, Rudy owns the national polls right now, and I think if the election were held today, he would be the best national candidate.  The problem is I don’t think the national polls mean anything until after the Iowa caucus because these polls are not based on any fully appreciation of any of the candidates yet.  And Rudy has a tremendous advantage of being really, really well-known and identified with a certain kind of strength that I think people, you know, find very appealing.  But I think all four of them have a glass jaw, which is what makes this a very interesting primary.  I think no—none of the big four kind of have a lock on this thing.  McCain’s glass jaw was immigration, and he got that hit and it knocked him right back.  A big, tough TV hit on Mitt Romney on kind of ideological gymnastics would hurt him.  A hit on Rudy Giuliani on social liberalism would hurt him, and I think a little bit of a hit on Fred Thompson could hurt him, too.  And we don’t really know what the Fred Thompson candidacy is yet, and I think the problem they’re going to have, just to give equal glass jaw time quickly to Fred, from a Republican point of view—and I like Fred, I think he’d be a pretty good president.  But I also think Fred doesn’t fit the super-conservative mold perfectly either.  Truth is, none of these guys do.  It’s like they’re all trying to haunt the George Allen space that got vacated, and I’m not even sure that was a ticket to the nomination.  So none of them quite fit, and we’ve got a very compressed schedule, where a few early states, I think, will run a domino effect.  And my big question, as a spectator now, is, is who’s going to hit who first with paid television?  (Unintelligible).

MR. RUSSERT:  Does laziness cut as an issue?

MR. MURPHY:  No, I don’t think so.  I think, I think Fred can fix that by executing the next two weeks well.  But Fred’s problem has been, there’s—he’s kind of been vaporware, as they say in Silicon Valley.  There’s a story of this great thing that’s supposed to happen, and then he goes out and he performs, and he hasn’t performed very well.  Now, he can fix that by performing really well, but now the stakes are high.  And we’re going to see in the next two weeks what he’s got.

MR. RUSSERT:  I remember when Ronald Reagan was accused of being lazy.  He said, “Well, you know, hard work never killed anybody.  But why, but why take a chance?”

MR. MURPHY:  Right, exactly.  Fred uses that line a lot.

MR. RUSSERT:  James Carville, how, how do you see the Republican race?  Be counterintuitive.

MR. CARVILLE:  I think I—well, I got to be intuitive here, but I think it’s true.  I’ve never seen a guy have so much pressure on him starting a campaign as Fred Thompson’s going to have.  We’re going to know in four weeks.  He doesn’t have any slip-up, then he probably slips off the radar screen.  If he performs, then it’s not going to matter what his organization’s—it’s going to matter much less what his organization’s like.  But I mean, I—the, the amount of attention that he’s going to get over the next three or four weeks is going to be enormous, the expectations.  He—if, if he does as well as everybody else, that’s not going to be good enough.

MR. MURPHY:  Yeah.

MR. CARVILLE:  I mean, as a result of his waiting, there’s a, there’s a ton of pent-up demand and interest in this guy, and people are really going to be watching him.  He’s going to be on Jay Leno this week.  They—the people are going to pay attention.  Every speech he gives, people are going to analyze it.  It’s going to be a very interesting time in U.S. politics.  The Republicans right now, by every measure, from fund-raising to polling, anything else, are really dissatisfied with their field.  So I mean, I suspect there’s a lot of Republican hope out there for Fred Thompson, but...

MR. SHRUM:  But the long, the long tease requires a great performance.

MR. CARVILLE:  It does.  It does.  It’s built it up.

MS. MATALIN:  Oh, but the only—anybody who was teased was 500 people that are talking to each other.  The Republicans for the first time are having...

MR. SHRUM:  Mary, I love you, but you are not actually the ideal spokesman for the average person in America.

MS. MATALIN:  I am a normal person.  Yes, I was at school orientation while you guys were glued to the TV on Larry Craig.  This performance—you know, the Republican Party is getting to date for the first time since 1960.  We’ve always had a front-runner.

MR. CARVILLE:  Right.  You got a...

MS. MATALIN:  So on a date, if you don’t perform the first out of the box, guess what?  You get another chance.

MR. RUSSERT:  Mary Matalin, on Wednesday night, all the other Republicans will be on a stage debating in New Hampshire.  Fred Thompson will be on Jay Leno.  Is that appropriate?

MS. MATALIN:  And guess what?  Who do you think has the largest audience at that time?  Jay Leno has 31 percent of the audience at the time immediately preceding the video.  This is a message-driven campaign, and we want to drive people, and the biggest place to do that was Jay Leno.  We want to drive him right at 12:01 to hear Fred Thompson’s principles, which is the definition of performance.  I don’t know what they mean by performance.  I know what he means by performance.  It is getting your principles out there, and we want to drive him right to the video so they don’t have to go through the prism of us. You can read it, and you can see it, and you can hear it and deliver his principles.  Thank you, Jay Leno.

MR. SHRUM:  Performance, Mary, means, can he answer basic questions, I think, about, that people now have about Republicans.  For example, should you vote Republican for—to end the war in Iraq?  Should you vote Republican for a better health care plan?  Should you vote Republican for a better economy.

MR. MURPHY:  No, Bob, you’re...

MS. MATALIN:  Oh.

MR. MURPHY:  You’re going into the general election wedge issues.  Nice try, but this is the primary we’re talking about.

MS. MATALIN:  I hope Hillary hires you.  That’s great, frame it up there quick.

MR. SHRUM:  I’m not for anybody.

MR. MURPHY:  The question, can he...

MS. MATALIN:  There’s not a question he cannot answer.

MR. MURPHY:  Can he up his message game, and can he working a media environment more hostile than Fox?  Those are the two questions I think he’s set up to answer, but he’s got to go do it.

MR. CARVILLE:  Yeah, he does.

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