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‘Meet the Press’ transcript for Oct. 21, 2007
Stephen Colbert on 'Meet the Press' |
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MS. GOODWIN: I mean, that’s the worst imagining, that we’re like tea bags. I mean, you sort of flop around on a piece of, of cup. But I think what that means for Eleanor is that when she found out about that affair, when they had been married 12 years, suddenly she sought to find her own identity. She became involved with women activists, she knew—she suddenly learned that she could speak in a way that she didn’t think before.
Hillary, you point out incredibly in your book, when the impeachment is going on, she’s planning her Senate race. And, and somebody comes and tells her that they’ve not voted to convict him in the Senate, she says, “Well, what about Erie County?” I mean, incredible...
MS. SMITH: Yeah.
MS. GOODWIN: ...that she could be that focused...(unintelligible)
MS. SMITH: Yeah. I mean, there was, there was another moment when, when—which I thought was the most revealing of all, when Bill Clinton had just confessed on national television that he had, in fact, been lying about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. There had been bombings in Africa. They had to go, they had to go to Martha’s Vineyard. Hillary had been humiliated before the world. She was obviously angry. He had to write a speech to give to the American public, and she put aside her anger and she sat down and worked with him on that speech. So it shows again how this glue has kept them together. It’s very unusual.
MR. RUSSERT: Judy Woodruff, when Senator Clinton goes out and talks about being a woman and historic, particularly with younger women, it is a fine line because of her being a victim in her own marriage. And it—how does she deal with that, in terms of saying to young women, “We’re feminists. We’re in this together,” and people say, “By the way, explain exactly your thinking on this.”
MS. WOODRUFF: Well, she’s not going to talk about it in those terms. I mean, we know that. We, we can only assume anything. And we really—because we really don’t know. They have drawn a, a veil, a, a—there’s a barrier. We don’t know. I think all—what she can do is focus on her positives and, and talk about what she, what she can do as a woman, as a candidate. I think it’s interesting we’re sitting here talking about Hillary Clinton being more maternal recently, talking about being the one woman on the stage with all the men. Imagine a political candidate trying to have it both ways. Because, on the other hand, people have been criticizing her for going out and stressing her national security credentials. “I’m strong enough to be the commander in chief.” That’s the balance that I think is very, very interesting that she’s trying to walk right now.
MR. RUSSERT: Kate O’Beirne, the one thing that Hillary Clinton has done is united the Republicans. Every major Republican candidate is running against Hillary Clinton. They talk about her more than Iraq, Social Security, any other issue. As much as she might fire up women and organize them and galvanize them to vote for her, what will she do to the Republican base or to men?
MS. O’BEIRNE: Well, the field of Republican candidates is clearly counting on her enthusing Republican voters who otherwise, given the state of the party, the disappointment with George Bush in many respects on the part of a big of his base—look what happened to Republicans in 2006. Democrat—a generic Democrat has to be so favored in 2008, given this climate, they are hoping that Hillary Clinton is not that Democrat, that she’s the one Democrat who will enthuse otherwise sort of dispirited Republican voters. They could be exaggerating that to an extent, I think. I mean, clearly there are an awful lot of conservatives who could never support Hillary Clinton based on the issues and her history in the White House. But I think she’s doing a pretty effective job so far. I don’t think—it might be more difficult for them to scare Republican voters with a crazy, wild-eyed liberal Hillary Clinton than they might think.
Now, we are reminded in Sally’s book—Sally talks about the ‘90s, there’s been this sort of curious amnesia, Sally calls it.
MS. SMITH: Yeah.
MS. O’BEIRNE: Because everything’s been so eventful since the Clinton presidency--9/11 and Afghanistan and Iraq—people sort of look back on the ‘90s as blessedly peaceful. That’s not going to last through, through 2008. We’re reminded in Sally’s book about Madison Guarantee and Whitewater and Travelgate and Johnny Chung and Monica Lewinsky. And I think there’s a major question about whether or not voters want to go back to the ‘90s.
MR. RUSSERT: That’s what Barack Obama and John Edwards have been trying to seize on, that they’re stronger general election candidates. People want to turn the page. Whether that will work or not, the voters in Iowa will start deciding in January.
Rudy Giuliani has been taking Hillary Clinton on front and center. Let’s watch what he said on Tuesday.
(Videotape, from “Hannity & Colmes”)
MR. RUDY GIULIANI: Honestly, and most respectfully, I don’t know Hillary’s experience. She’s never run a city. She’s never run a state. She’s never run a business. She’s never met a payroll. She’s never been responsible for the safety and security of millions of people, much less even hundreds of people. So I’m, I’m trying to figure out where the experience is here. It would seem to me that in a time of difficult problems and war, we don’t want on-the-job training, you know, for an, for an executive.
(End videotape)
MR. RUSSERT: Doris.
MS. GOODWIN: Well, it’s true, I think, that mayors and governors have more executive experience in daily lives of their, their constituents. But, on the other hand, since she’s been an integral partner with Bill all this time—she was right by his side as governor, she was in the White House—I think the greatest experience that she might have is almost like they get the chance--(to Ms. Smith) and I think you said this—to do it all over again. She can learn from the mistakes they made in the transition, the mistakes they made in not compromising on health care. She was by his side, she edited his speeches, she was the closer. She was a team member. So the real question is she’s had more on-the-job experience as president and co-president in the White House if she can learn from what went wrong as well as what went right. So I think he’s wrong about that.
MR. RUSSERT: But in the campaign, she will focus on the successes and try to avoid any discussion that she was a participant in the failures.
MS. GOODWIN: I think that’s something she’s got to learn. Kate’s right, I think she’s getting better. The country wants to hear her able to talk about what she learned that made her not do things the way she wants to. It’s not just the partisan divide. Those failures were their failures in part. There’s no problem with learning from that. Then her experience is unmatchable. Who else has sat in that White House for eight years and learned from what went wrong?
MS. O’BEIRNE: Although...
MS. GOODWIN: So I think that’s something she’s got to figure out.
MS. O’BEIRNE: Although the biggest thing she was responsible for, the one thing she really managed was, of course, the disastrous health care reform. And Republican candidates are certainly going to be reminding the public that that was her signature accomplishment during the Clinton years.
MS. SMITH: And, and I think by examining that, that whole process, you can see how the intersection of their personal life and trying to get this policy put into effect, and how that spilled over in so many ways and, and really impeded—there, there were many moments along the way when, when they could have achieved three-quarters of a loaf, but because, again, that marital dynamic, they, they couldn’t.
MR. RUSSERT: He said—the president held up a pen...
MS. SMITH: He held up the pen...
MR. RUSSERT: ...”I will veto. I will veto.”
MS. SMITH: ...and she encouraged him to do that while others were saying, “No, don’t do it.”
MS. O’BEIRNE: Compromise.
MS. SMITH: But getting back to what Doris said about, you know, all the range of things, it was—a lot of it wasn’t even known in the White House, much less by the public. I mean, she had, for example, staff members going every week to the White House counsel’s office to work with people from the Justice Department to screen candidates for the federal bench and attorney general. That’s a familiar subject these days. And so people used her as a back channel. There were lots of ways. And so what I think what Doris is sort of addressing is the notion that we have to think about accountability and transparency. And if we’re going to have two presidents in the White House, who’s going to be in charge, what’s the balance going to be? Is it going to be 50/50, 60/40, 51/49? And how do you—you’re in a meeting and what do you say when somebody who sat behind that Oval Office desk says, “Well, I did it my way. How about this way?”
MS. WOODRUFF: Whatever happens, Tim, she’s already had a big effect on this race. The other candidates all—you go to their Web sites, they all have pages about where they stand on women’s issues. They, they tout who the prominent women are who are supporting their campaign. Mitt Romney has Meg Whitman, who’s the chairman of eBay, and, and I could go on with, with many examples. And, finally, Tim, I mean she’s influenced the way we cover the campaign. You have an all-women panel here this morning. We could call you an honorary skirt.
MR. RUSSERT: Yeah. This is the not the first time. I’ve done this before.
MS. WOODRUFF: I know you have.
MR. RUSSERT: And we’ll do it again.
MS. WOODRUFF: All right.
MR. RUSSERT: I was talking about the Values Voters Conference here in Washington—Summit here in Washington. The Family Research Council had—Tony Perkins said that Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton are indistinguishable on social and cultural issues. There was a straw vote taken amongst conservative activists, Christian activists, and this is how—there they are there casting their straw votes—and this is how it came down online and in that hall combined. Mitt Romney, 27.62 percent; Huckabee, 27.15; Ron Paul; Fred Thompson; undecided; San Brownback, who’s now withdrawn; Duncan Hunter; Tom Tancredo; Rudy Giuliani, 1.85 percent, ahead of only John McCain. And of voters just in the hall alone, look at this, Mike Huckabee, 51.26. He gave them a stem-winding, Baptist preacher presentation yesterday. Mitt Romney at 10 percent; Thompson, 8; Tancredo, 6; Giuliani, 6; Hunter, 5; McCain, 3. What does that tell you, Kate?
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