'Meet the Press' transcript for April 20, 2008

MR. RUSSERT:  Our political roundtable:  David Brooks of The New York Times; E.J. Dionne, Washington Post; and NPR’s Michele Norris, after this station break.

(Announcements)

MR. RUSSERT:  And we are back.  Welcome, all.

David Brooks, back in January you said Barack Obama “may be changing the face of American politics.” This week you said something much different, that he’s been ground down and probably would have a difficult time being elected.”

MR. DAVID BROOKS:  Well, he—he’ll have challenges.  And, and this is the—I don’t know if it’s the tragedy of Barack Obama, but, but the challenge of Barack Obama.  The man has extraordinary gifts.  The man is extraordinarily thoughtful for a politician, enormously deep in the way he thinks about the world.  And I think he really does want to have a discussion, really change American politics.  But it’s been 15 months since he’s been running, and the last three months have been different.  And the conversation we just heard on this show, the tone of that conversation, believe me, is very different from the tone of Barack Obama’s speech in Des Moines three months ago.  And the campaign has changed him.  And I think it’s changed him in two ways, which has made him less inspiring for a lot of us who are not orthodox liberals.  It’s changed him because he seems like a more conventional politician, trading jibes about who’s throwing which negative ad at each other, which is not particularly hopeful.  And then he’s become—as he’s had to chase Democratic primary votes, he’s become much more orthodox liberal.  He, he seems very traditionally liberal on trade, on the war, in the debate.  He made an ironclad promise to bring American troops home in 16 months after he’s elected.  We don’t know what Iraq is going to be like two years from now.  Why is he making ironclad promises for a policy that won’t be enacted for two years?  So it’s become a much rougher season, and it’s really taken him away from the most inspiring parts about him.

MR. RUSSERT:  What do you think, E.J. Dionne?

MR. E.J. DIONNE:  I thought that was a brilliant way of making two columns fit together on David’s part.  I think this has been a very rough campaign, and I think we’ve seen just on the—your show today how much damage this could do to the Democratic Party.  Here you had two of the best liked Democratic operatives who are going at each other hammer and tongue.  I think for people who were for Obama from the beginning, they still see that promise in him. But for people who had been on the fence, I think the need to engage in this long campaign really has taken something out of him.  The question will be can he rediscover that later on in the campaign if he wins this nomination?  And he still has to be the favorite to win this nomination.  I, I think that the interaction in a very difficult primary period doesn’t necessarily set the tone for the rest of the campaign.

MR. RUSSERT:  Michele.

MS. MICHELE NORRIS:  It’s an interesting balancing act that he, that he has to go through in trying to inspire people but, at the same time, convince people that he is tough enough

MR. BROOKS:  Right.

MS. NORRIS:  ...in a general election campaign, because part of what you hear again and again from Hillary Clinton is that she—that he is not strong enough to stand up to John McCain, to the attack machine that they’re surely going to throw at him.  You mentioned the, you know, the ad that the, the Republican operatives and the people who practice in the dark arts of opposition research are probably working on at this moment.  People worried that he wasn’t tough enough to do this.  You know, when you mentioned the ironclad promise, I mean, one thing that may help him, at least in the primary, is that Hillary Clinton is also making a similar ironclad promise to bring troops back from Iraq within six months, regardless of what the generals tell her.

MR. RUSSERT:  And John McCain, ironclad promise...

MS. NORRIS:  Mm-hmm.

MR. RUSSERT:  ...keep the troops there until we have achieved success or victory.

MR. DIONNE:  Right, but...

MR. BROOKS:  And it’s a sign of people caring more about the campaign than about governing, because when you’re governing, you don’t want those ironclad promises.

What bothers me about Obama is that he seems to have forgotten the strength that got him here.  After Jeremiah Wright, he really gave this great speech about race.  After the San Francisco comments, I think he should’ve given a great speech about class in America.  He should’ve re-given the speech he gave a couple years ago about religion in America.  His strength is he has the ability to elevate above conventional politics.  Last couple weeks, it’s been conventional politics.

MS. NORRIS:  You know, can I just say one thing?

MR. RUSSERT:  Sure.

MS. NORRIS:  I mean, there’s a lot of people who looked at, you know, the question in the debate about the questionnaire and whether or not he had signed the questionnaire.  One of the things that, that the campaign had talked about is perhaps trying to elevate the debate on gun ownership in America.  If there was never an—ever an opportunity to do that, Pennsylvania would be the, the place to do this.  There are some 12 million hunters in America, one million of them are in Pennsylvania.  And so, as someone who comes from the 13^th district in Chicago, where gun issues are very different in a place where young people are sent to their grave early because of this, you know, people wondered if he would stand up to the hunters and say, “I respect your position, but, you know, understand that there are people in America who view this in a different way.” Instead, he spoke like a politician.

MR. DIONNE:  And I think Michele hit on the paradox that Obama confronts. And we’re really scrambling lots of stereotypes in this campaign.  One is a gender stereotype.  Hillary Clinton is running as the tough fighter, and if Obama doesn’t show Democrats that he can be a tough fighter against the Republican attack machine, so-called, but in fact it is, then, you know, Democrats are going to pull back from him.  So he’s got to do both at the same time.  He’s got to be the unifier David talks about, and he’s got to be a tough unifier.  That’s a hard thing to do.

MR. RUSSERT:  Here’s the latest numbers from Pennsylvania, as I showed the two strategists, Clinton, 48; Obama, 43, a five-point race.

The internals are fun.  Here it is.  Amongst hunters, 56, Clinton; Obama, 31. Gun owners, Clinton, 53; Obama, 28.  And bowlers, 54-to-33.  I guessed they heard he bowled a 37.  But here’s the comeback for Obama, beer drinkers, 44-to-44.

MR. BROOKS:  You know, the scary thing about that poll is more Pennsylvanians claim to be gun owners than beer drinkers.  I can’t believe that.

MR. RUSSERT:  At the debate, Senator Clinton was asked a question by George Stephanopoulos about the fall and success.  Let’s listen.

(Videotape)

MR. GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS:  The question is, do you think Senator Obama can do that?  Can he win?

SEN. CLINTON:  Yes.  Yes.  Yes.  Now, I think that I can do a better job.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT:  By saying “yes, yes, yes,” Michele, does she undercut one of the premises of her campaign was that—which they had been saying quietly to superdelegates.

MS. NORRIS:  Right.

MR. RUSSERT:  “He can’t win.” She said “Yes, yes, yes.”

MS. NORRIS:  Yeah.  I mean, that’s something that’s very different than the argument that, that superdelegates say that they’re hearing either directly from the Clintons or from the Clinton surrogates.  They’re either, you know, there are various reports on this.  Some say that they’ve outright said that he’s unelectable.  Some have said that he’s—they question his unelectability. So in, in that sense, you know, when Geoff Garin was talking about this effort to woo the superdelegates, how it needs to take place in the full light of day, so far this hasn’t been happening in the full light of day.  It has been happening in pulling people to the side and making these phone calls.  It’s very—it’s a very, very different argument that’s being made.

Sort of, you know, one thing, though, about the, the—over all the polls?  One think I think is interesting in looking at the numbers in Pennsylvania, there are 150,000 new registered voters in Pennsylvania, and some 160,000 people who have switched to the Democratic Party.  And when you look at the polls and how close they are, I wonder how accurate the polls are because these are two, two groups of people who wouldn’t be counted in any of these polls.  So, you know, it’s a case of that we could all be surprised on Tuesday.

MR. RUSSERT:  And wouldn’t that be nice?  By a—we love being surprised.  We were surprised...

MR. DIONNE:  We never—we’ve never been surprised all year in this process.

MR. RUSSERT:  New Hampshire, Super Tuesday, North, South Carolina.

You know, one of the interesting things, to your point, David, is what these campaigns do to these candidates.  Look at these numbers, favorable, unfavorable.  Here’s Hillary Clinton.  Forty-four favorable, 54 unfavorable. In January, 58-to-40.  Bill Clinton, 47 favorable, 51 unfavorable.  In February, 55, 42.  Barack Obama, 56 favorable, 39 unfavorable.  He was 63 back in January.  John McCain, favorable, 53-to-40.  He was up 59-to-30 back in January.  It takes a poll.

MR. BROOKS:  Can you imagine doing that?  Leading that life?  No normal person would live that way, and no normal person would emerge normally after that, giving the same speech eight times a day for 15 months?  It destroys you, and it, it makes you less attractive and that’s even without the negative ads.

MR. RUSSERT:  Is it a fair test for—to determine who’d be the best president?

MR. BROOKS:  I don’t think so.  You know, watching the debate, the whole furor over the ABC debate, what strikes me is we should actually test candidates by how they’re going to act as president.  We should have war games.  Put them in a room with their advisers.

MR. DIONNE:  Table like this.

MR. BROOKS:  Give them a circumstance and see how they react to decisions and uncertainty.  The debate is a totally artificial way to judge who’s going to be a good president or not.

MR. RUSSERT:  What did you think of Hillary Clinton’s umbrella of the turn saying that she would defend countries, other than Israel, who are attacked by Iran.

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