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‘Meet the Press’ transcript for Sept. 16, 2007
MR. RUSSERT: There was also exchange within the Democratic Party. Barack Obama gave a speech about the war, and this is what he said.
(Videotape)
SEN. BARACK OBAMA (D-IL): Despite or perhaps because of how much experience they had in Washington, too many politicians feared looking weak and fail to ask the hard questions. Too many took the president at his word instead of reading the intelligence for themselves.
(End videotape)
MR. RUSSERT: Now, Chris Cillizza, you wrote this: “Make no mistake, that line was a direct shot at Clinton and her argument that” “alone in the field has”—“she alone in the field has the experience to change the course of Iraq policy. What Obama is hoping to do is take Clinton’s greatest strength—the image among voters that she has the experience to be president—and use it against her. For all of her experience, Obama and his supporters argue, Clinton got the most important vote in the past five years wrong. Obama (at the time a state Senator in Illinois) got it right. Judgment trumps experience, argues the Obama team.”
MR. CILLIZZA: I, I think that’s the fundamental argument that you’re going to see that dynamic play out is they’ve realized—I think the Obama campaign may have suspected or thought that this use of force resolution vote was going to be more damaging to this point than it has been to Senator Clinton. It hasn’t really been. Her refusal to apologize was an issue very early in the campaign but hasn’t been now. I think what they see is they see the polling that we all see, too. It shows most people who, who are supportive of Hillary Clinton, and even those who aren’t, are because they believe she’s the most experienced candidate. To use that, to turn that experience against her is what this is about. It’s about saying, “I was a state senator, but I had the judgment. And, in the end, isn’t judgment more important than Washington experience?” I think that’s the argument you’re going to see Obama and his campaign make as we move forward to dry—try and draw that contrast with Senator Clinton.
MR. RUSSERT: Barack Obama also undercame—underwent some scrutiny. Here it is, Chuck Todd. “Some anti-war Democrats have raised questions about the depth of Obama’s opposition, taking aim at one of the signature arguments for his candidacy—that” he’s “the only leading Democratic candidate who opposed the war from the beginning. They say that while Obama did argue against the war as a Senate candidate, he tempered his rhetoric and his opposition once he arrived in the Capitol, rejecting timetables for withdrawal and” blocking “war funding bills. He returned to a sharper position, they say, when he started running for president.”
MR. TODD: As a Clinton supporter said to me over the weekend that’s a real profile in courage there of Obama, that, you know, he’s, he’s cherry-picking his own language. But see, that’s the problem Obama has, you know. He wanted to make that vote of hers and her speech on the Senate floor supporting that resolution basically the referendum on her. And it hasn’t happened. And instead what’s happened is that, because of Edwards and because of the anti-war left, it’s sort of a “Who cares what she said in ‘02? What are you doing right now?” And instead, what happened, you had Obama and Clinton as the last two senators to vote on whether to authorize some funding. They’re not leading, and that’s the chief criticism of both Clinton and Obama. And as far as the Clinton campaign’s concerned, that’s fine. If they’re lumped together as not leading on this issue in the Senate, that’s a win—de facto win for Clinton.
MR. CILLIZZA: Right.
MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn to the Republicans quickly. Fred Thompson, late entry into the race, has been to New Hampshire, been to Iowa, been to Florida. A lot of the national punditry, columns have been criticizing him. Is that fair criticism? How is he doing? How has it shaped the race?
MR. CILLIZZA: I think what he did is, he built a lot of excitement early on in the spring when he said he was going to run, but then he didn’t announce he was running until after Labor Day. The problem is that leaves you out in the open for quite a bit of time where people can look at you. He didn’t help his cause by a lot of staff departures, questions about what role his wife had, was it an appropriate role. And I still think, even though polling has shown him running almost even now with Rudy Giuliani—not terribly surprising given the bump that he would get from all the television coverage of his announcement—I still think the question is, is there “there” there, with Fred Thompson? Does he have the heart to do it? Does he have the organization to do it in places like Iowa and New Hampshire? It’s hard for me to imagine that he comes in third or fourth in Iowa, second or third in New Hampshire and all of a sudden the South Carolina poll numbers that we see, where he’s running well, stay solid. This is a fluid process. It’s hard for me to imagine that he stays in that and makes it South Carolina, Florida and beyond as his winning strategy. We’ll see.
MR. TODD: You know, I worry that we, we here in the Beltway are going to have a disconnect on Thompson because, for all intents and purposes, he’s been terrible even on the trail this week. Didn’t know that Terri—said he didn’t have enough information on the Terri Schiavo stuff to, to really comment on it seriously. But he immediately, according to our NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, coalesced a group of Republicans that make up the core Republican primary voter—older, more conservative, older men—and if he holds that group, you know, he could be the nominee and that’s—you know, maybe this will all falter and all of his missteps will catch up with him on the trail. But right now I’d worry that we have a disconnect.
MR. RUSSERT: To be continued. Chuck Todd, Chris Cillizza, thanks very much. We’ll be right back.
(Announcements)
MR. RUSSERT: Join our political team for MSNBC’s Super Tuesday. Nonstop political coverage all day this Tuesday. We’ll be back next week with an exclusive Sunday morning interview with the former chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan, right here on MEET THE PRESS, because if it’s Sunday, it is MEET THE PRESS.
Go Boston College Eagles. Matty Ryan, Heisman Trophy.
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