'Meet the Press' transcript for Jan. 20, 2008

MR. RUSSERT: Let's turn to the Democrats. That's it...

MS. GOODWIN: A perfect transition.

MR. RUSSERT: Perfect segue.

And one of the things that happened this week was Barack Obama gave an interview to the Reno Gazette-Journal. And he began to talk about ideas, Ronald Reagan, Democrats.  This is what Obama said.

(Videotape, Monday):

SEN. BARACK OBAMA (D-IL): I think it's fair to say the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last 10, 15 years, in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom.

Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that, you know, Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it.

He tapped into what people were already feeling, which is we want clarity, we want optimism, we want, you know, a return to that sense of dynamism and, you know, entrepreneurship that had been missing.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT: His opponents...

MS. NOONAN: Good stuff.

MR. RUSSERT: His opponents, John Edwards and Hillary Clinton, immediately pounced on those comments. Here's what they said.

(Videotape, Tuesday):

MR. JOHN EDWARDS: Senator Obama, when speaking, used Ronald Reagan, President Ronald Reagan, as an example of change. Now, my view is, I would never use Ronald Reagan as an example of change.

(End videotape)

(Videotape, Friday):

Senator HILLARY CLINTON (Democrat, New York): My leading opponent the other day said that he thought the Republicans had better ideas than Democrats the last 10 to 15 years. That's not the way I remember the last 10 to 15 years.

(End videotape)

MS. NORRIS: Yeah.

MS. GOODWIN: You know, it's a sad point in our history when a presidential candidate cannot look back over the course of our history and show admiration for a president who did what he said. He didn't really say that he had better ideas, he said that he had transformed the country, created a conservative movement. Now, I can understand why Edwards and Hillary take that point up, but I think what's happening here is that Hillary has a sense of playing to the base, as Edwards was, and the base doesn't like Ronald Reagan. They don't like Bush. But what Obama was trying to say was, if you want a transformative presidency, if you want somebody who is going to be able, as Teddy Roosevelt was, as FDR was, as perhaps John Kennedy was, to inspire and move the country forward, you've got to have those skills that Ronald Reagan had. It's an historical fact! There was nothing wrong with saying that.

MR. RUSSERT: Interestingly enough, the Salmon Press in New Hampshire, which endorsed Hillary Clinton, cited as one of the reasons that, when they talked to her in the interview, she listed Ronald Reagan as one of her favorite presidents.

MS. NOONAN: That's right.

MR. BROKAW: May I have a cheap, self-serving moment? In my book, "Boom"...

MS. GOODWIN: Of course.

MR. RUSSERT: A best seller! "Boom," by Tom Brokaw.

MR. BROKAW: ...she says that Ronald Reagan plays the music beautifully, and she talked about how he balanced the interests of the middle class and took on the Soviets. What was also in that speech, or that remark that Obama gave, I thought didn't get enough attention probably, was how he dissed Bill Clinton.

MS. GOODWIN: Yeah.

MS. NOONAN: Yeah.

MR. BROKAW: I mean, he threw him overboard. He said he didn't have any new ideas.

MS. NOONAN: Yeah.

MR. BROKAW: And John Edwards may forget that what Ronald Reagan did was create a whole new class of voters...

MS. GOODWIN: Right.

MR. BROKAW: ...that Peggy, especially, is familiar with, called Reagan Democrats.

MS. NOONAN: Yeah, baby.

MR. BROKAW: A lot of people came across the line.

MR. RUSSERT: Did...

MS. NOONAN: Absolutely.

MS. NORRIS: Which is why John Edwards' statement was so surprising.

MR. BROKAW: Yeah.

MS. NORRIS: Because I mean, if you--if you look at his stump speeches, if you look at, you know, the proposals that he's putting forth, they're clearly aimed at Reagan Democrats.

MR. BROKAW: Yeah.

MS. NORRIS: So why he would stand up on the stump and pillory Reagan, I thought was curious.

MR. BROKAW: Did anyone else...

MS. NOONAN: I think Obama looked gracious, I must say. I thought he looked above the fray and gracious. And I thought he was echoing Pat Moynihan, Democratic--former Democratic Senator Pat Moynihan's statement in 1979, "Of a sudden, the Republican Party is the party of ideas." That's what he was trying to say.

MR. RUSSERT: Well, I'll further...

MS. NOONAN: He was trying to say, "Look"...

MR. RUSSERT: I'll further complicate this conversation.

MS. NOONAN: Oh, good.

MS. GOODWIN: All right.

MR. RUSSERT: Because Moynihan did say exactly that. And in 2002, after the Democrats lost the midterm elections, William Jefferson Clinton said, "The Democrats have to have ideas to win. We are MIA, missing in action on national security and have no positive plan for America's domestic future."

MS. GOODWIN: Wow.

MR. RUSSERT: Compare that to what President Clinton said Friday in Nevada about Barack Obama's comments about Ronald Reagan.

(Videotape, January 18, 2008):

MR. BILL CLINTON: Her principal opponent said that since 1992, the Republicans have had all the good ideas. It goes along with that plan to ask the Republicans to become Democrats for a day and caucus with you tomorrow, and then go back and become Republicans so they can participate in the Republican primary. I'm not making this up, folks.

(End videotape)

MS. GOODWIN: This is going to be fantastic...

MS. NOONAN: Yeah.

MS. GOODWIN: ...what role that Bill Clinton is going to play.

MS. NOONAN: Yeah.

MS. GOODWIN: You know, I heard you guys last night talking about the good cop, bad cop thing, and to some extent that reminisces about RFK and JFK. But it's different. I mean, when JFK--there's a wonderful moment when JFK's on a porch in the White House, and a Southern senator comes up to him and says, "I'm going to have to attack you on these civil rights," he says, "Oh, no, don't do that. Can't you attack Bobby, instead?" So to some extent he's playing the role of the guy who attacks, whereas Hillary can then be above the fray. The difference was that Bobby was an inside player, he wasn't a public spokesman. And everything that Bill Clinton says is on the air.

And it seems to me, in some ways--and I suspect he'll get better at it--he's been running around the world and he's been lionized. He hasn't had to be in the fray. And he's not used to having this kind of back and forth anymore. He's been great at it before. But showing anger and getting irritated never helps, even though the things he says help her. I mean, I think when he said, "You're rolling the dice with Obama," that it somehow, to a certain extent, underscored his lack of experience. When he talks about when they--I think it, it works in a perverse way, but at some point his act is going to have to become a better racehorse.

MR. RUSSERT: Well, let's put it, let's put that all that on the table.

MS. NOONAN: Oh, my goodness. He is...

MR. RUSSERT: Let's put all that on the table, because that's very important. He did say Obama could be risky, could be rolling the dice. And then he went to Nevada on Friday and made a direct accusation about the Culinary Workers Union. Let's watch that.

(Videotape, January 18, 2008):

MR. CLINTON: Today, when my daughter and I were wandering through the hotel, and all these culinary workers were mobbing us, telling us they didn't care what they'd been told to do, they were going to caucus for Hillary, there was a representative of the organization trotting along behind us, going up to everybody that said that, and said, "If you're not going to vote for our guy, we're going to give you a schedule tomorrow so you can't be there." So is this the new politics? I haven't seen anything like that in America in 35 years.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT: So we asked the Clinton campaign if in fact that had occurred, would a complaint be filed, and what were the circumstances and who were the people involved? And they said they'd get back to us.

MS. NOONAN: Oh.

MS. GOODWIN: Have they?

MR. RUSSERT: Not yet. Not yet. Also, when Bill Clinton was talking about Barack Obama's positions on Iraq, this is what he said in New Hampshire.

(Videotape, January 7, 2008):

MR. CLINTON: Give me a break. This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT: Now, Jon Meacham, in today's Newsweek, you have an item called--article, "Leading Democrats to Bill Clinton: Pipe Down," saying that Ted Kennedy and Rahm Emanuel, one of the leaders of the Republican--Democrats in the House, are saying this kind of rhetoric can hurt the unity of the party. And they quote Greg Craig, who was President Clinton's lawyer during impeachment, saying "If the Hillary's campaign can't control Bill, how is Hillary's White House going to control him?" Which is an--I think an issue worth discussing.

MR. MEACHAM: It is an issue worth discussing. Jonathan Alter broke that story, and it does go to this theme--some of us have been joking around the office, if King Lear had a Southern accent, we would see--he would be Bill Clinton.

The--he, he has the vices of his virtues, like all of us. He's the greatest campaigner, terrific politician. But it's not entirely about him anymore, and I think in a way he has overcompensated as he has gone a bit too far; he's--apparently that's what Senator Kennedy and Congressman Emanuel think, as he's gone around the country campaigning for her. I think it's a completely legitimate question, what he's going to be doing if the 44th president was...

MR. RUSSERT: Floating ideas? Freelancing? Where...

MS. NOONAN: Yeah. I got...

MR. MEACHAM: Well, he can't--he's congenitally incapable of not talking, which is a great gift at one level. But at the same time, is he speaking for the administration? You'll remember, Senator Clinton said recently that she would not have reached out to him in a direct, official way, say in the aftermath of the assassination in Pakistan. Interesting questions.

MS. NOONAN: Can I say, on the campaign trail, one of the things I find jarring the past few weeks is that Hillary Clinton is the first major party woman running for president of the United States. She is a woman. She's running for president. She's running for head of the United States, chief executive officer. And she has to send her husband out to yell at the neighbors? It's like she's, she's saying, "You go out there, you fight for me. My husband's going to tell you off!" There's something strange, jarring, unbecoming and even unfeminist about it.

MS. GOODWIN: I doubt that she's sending him out. I think he's going out on his own.

MS. NOONAN: You think he's just on his own. Oh, my goodness, it's her campaign. If she didn't want him out there wagging his finger, turning red and arguing with reporters and bringing a level of temper and heat to the proceedings, if she did not want that, I'm sure she would stop it. And if she cannot, we should all just stop and take a breath.

MR. RUSSERT: It is interesting. And I want to get everyone's perspective on this. The coalition that Hillary Clinton put together in Nevada following the discussion of race between Clinton and Obama for a week. She won women 51-to-38, she won Hispanics 64-to-26; Obama won blacks 83-to-14.

MS. NOONAN: Hm.

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