'Meet the Press' transcript for April 27, 2008

MR. RUSSERT:  I always enjoy debates over debates, because there's history to these things.  I remember back in 2000, when Hillary Clinton first ran for the U.S. Senate, and this is what we found.  "Mark McMahon, a 39-year-old orthopedic surgeon, managed to force [Hillary] Clinton into a [Senate] primary by collecting" "40,000" signatures from "Democrats." She wanted the debate her.  She's "greeted like a celebrity at most stops." "`We're focused on the real debate in this race'" between--"`one between Mrs. Clinton and'" the "`[Republican] Mr. Lazio,'" said Howard Wolfson.  He was doing it back then as well.  And then in 2006, "During the [2006 Senate] Democratic primary season, Mrs. Clinton refused to debate her antiwar challenger, Jonathan Tasini, all but ignoring his candidacy and sidestepping his attacks on her vote to authorize the invasion of Iraq." Politicians pick and choose when they debate, David.

MR. BRODER:  Of course.  And there's--perfectly natural that they would. But, at this moment, I think Mrs. Clinton is probably representing the views of most of the Democratic voters because, just as Gwen said, those folks are still looking for answers about the questions that really affect their lives, and they're not getting that.  They didn't get it in that last debate in Pennsylvania, and they would like to get it now.  So I think she's on a very strong, popular picket--wicket with this appeal for a new debate.

MR. RUSSERT:  Andrea Mitchell, Barack Obama saying we've had 21 debates, no more before Indiana and North Carolina.

MS. MITCHELL:  Well, he's the front-runner, she's the challenger, so she needs the debate more than he does.  He certainly didn't do very well in the Pennsylvania debate.  I think that this tone of hers also helps her with this gritty fighting spirit that has to--has had some resonance with voters in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Texas.  She's hitting her stride.  You don't hear the shrill sound from Hillary Clinton any longer.  And people are saying that she's in her zone, she seems comfortable, she is very, very calm about what is going to happen.  She knows she's behind, and that it is really a long shot. Her problem is, as she tries to appeal to superdelegates and tell them that she is more electable, that every time she seems to be making progress, Bill Clinton steps in it, as he did in Philadelphia with the NPR interview, and with the interview with our own NBC reporter, National Journal reporter with the finger-wagging moment.  And he doesn't seem to understand the viral nature of these things, how they are propelled, that he can't just be out in some small town, and it won't be resonating with Jim Clyburn in South Carolina.  So she's saying she's more electable, but she is at risk--has lost this huge constituency of people who were on the fence--Jim Clyburn, who had not declared--and that is possibly a fatal blow to her.

MR. RUSSERT:  Gwen, how does Barack Obama handle this for--before the primary a week from Tuesday, saying, "I don't want to debate, I want to talk directly to the people about issues"?

MS. IFILL:  He does what she would do, which is to completely ignore her. There is--the--when you look at it from his point of view, especially given how well he does not necessarily do in debates, there's no incentive to do it. The only reason to do it is if, if there's something to gain and not more than that to lose, and I, I don't quite see how the formula adds up for him wanting to do it.

Do you?

MR. DICKERSON:  No, not at all.  And what they want to do is they want to get pictures of him with regular people, real people.  I mean, this problem with, with downscale voters exists.  They want to try and fix it.  So he's talking about things like gas prices, things that affect them in their daily lives, and talking about how his reform message affects them in their daily lives. So they don't want to be on the stage.  He didn't do well in the last debate. He hasn't done well in the debates, and all the exit polls, the people who base their decision on watching the debates always go for Clinton.  He doesn't want to be on that, that stage.  He wants to be seen with regular people, and so they're not--they're going to, as you say, ignore it.

MR. RUSSERT:  Richard, do they think they pay a political price by not debating?

MR. WOLFFE:  Minimal.  They want to--actually, you know, they think they pay more of a price by getting into the fray.  They don't think that the fray is a good place for him to be, and that's a realization that has come out of Pennsylvania.  He doesn't do attack politics as well as she does.  So they'll put that into the hands of surrogates, and, as for the sort of ambush type approach of a debate, which is how they felt, rightly or wrongly, the ABC debate was, they're going to avoid it.  And, look, anytime you hear a candidate talk about Lincoln-Douglas debates, you know they're running some way behind.  Mike Huckabee was the last guy to do that.

MR. BRODER:  But I do--I, I disagree a bit with my colleagues because I think he does pay a price.  Because the real constituency now that they're fighting over are the superdelegates.  And by her showing that he is unwilling to face her, he reminds them that in, if he's their nominee, he will have to face John McCain, who's manager, Rick Davis, has said publicly, "We want more debates." So I think this is an issue that he cannot just look at in terms of this primary.  He's got to figure out what's the effect on the superdelegates.

MR. RUSSERT:  The Pew Center has done some research about the campaign, and Democratic views have changed.  This is what they found:  "Democratic views of the tone of the campaign have changed substantially since February. Currently, half of Democrats (50%) say the campaign's been too negative," more than what was being said in February, (19%).  ...

"Two-thirds of the public, 65 percent, ...[and] even Democrats, ...  a 57% majority, see the campaign as too long."

Is this a problem, John?

MR. DICKERSON:  It is a problem for a couple of reasons.  Also, in exit polls in Pennsylvania, you saw that voters saw Obama and Clinton both as being more negative, so they're each getting hurt.  And John McCain's getting his act together.  This doesn't necessarily mean he's winning over voters, but he's getting his policy staff, he's making all kinds of mistakes kind of under the cover here while this campaign--he's made quite a lot of mistakes talking about the economy, but it doesn't get covered.  And meanwhile we have this delay in the Democrat--Democrats, who, who basically have a very good hand going into the general election, are starting now to feel unhappy, something they never thought that they would face.  And when they finally get to a Democratic nominee, then that nominee will have to go through all of the getting their legs under them process that happens once you go from being a primary person to, to being the party's nominee.

MR. RUSSERT:  Alex Castellanos, the Republican strategist, was on TV the other night and said this:  "Clinton's running the ads Republicans would love to be running so--now, so we don't have to because Hillary Clinton is doing it.  Yes, it could--would be hard for a Republican to run an ad with Osama bin Laden in it.  Not so much now because Hillary has already done it against Obama.

"It would be difficult for a Republican to run an ad questioning does Barack Obama have the strength of character to lead the country.  Well, not so much now because Hillary has already done it."

Is that a Republican sort of protecting his flank, getting ready for a rollout, or has Hillary Clinton's attacks on Obama paved the way for McCain if Obama becomes the nominee?

MS. MITCHELL:  She's written the playbook for John McCain.  They've done all the opposition research.  I think that Obama has also had some self-inflicted wounds, notably in San Francisco, the bitter comment, which just didn't play right, and I--you know, obviously I don't think he's handled Jeremiah Wright, we can talk about that.  I don't think he anticipated the impact of that and the way it would be perceived out of context or in context.  But Hillary Clinton has laid out a road map for the Republicans, and that is one of the Obama arguments.  The Obama supporters are arguing that she is destroying him, even if he is the nominee, and he is the presumptive nominee and the front-runner, certainly.

MR. RUSSERT:  Jeremiah Wright had--former pastor for Barack Obama, has re-emerged.  He's speaking to the NAACP in Detroit today, at the National Press Club tomorrow.  He was on with Bill Moyers on PBS on Thursday, and let's watch a piece of that exchange.

(Videotape)

MR. BILL MOYERS:  Barack Obama was a skeptic when it came to religion.  He sought you out because he knew you knew about the community.  You led him to the faith.  You baptized him, you performed his wedding ceremony, you baptized his two children.  You were, for 20 years, his spiritual counselor.  He has said that.  And yet he, in that speech at Philadelphia, had to say some hard things about you.  How did it go down with you when you heard Barack Obama say those things?

REV. JEREMIAH WRIGHT:  It, it went down very simply.  He's a politician; I'm a pastor.  We speak to two different audiences.  And he says what he has to say as a politician.  I say what I have to say as a pastor.  Those are two different worlds.  I do what I do; he does what politicians do.  So that--what happened in Philadelphia, where he had to respond to the sound bites, he responded as a politician.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT:  Gwen Ifill, a pastor's daughter that covers politics.

MS. IFILL:  That pastor's daughter thing is going to haunt me forever.  You know what?  I listened to that and I thought, "Exactly." Since when is Barack Obama not a politician?  This idea that he is--sure, he has, he has created himself as this "I'm above it all, I'm going to change Washington" kind of guy, but I never was confused about whether he was a politician.  I don't think most voters were confused about whether he's a politician.  And what Jeremiah Wright is trying to do now is trying to make the distinction between what they do.  If you watched the whole half-hour with Moyers, it was actually very fascinating.  Jeremiah Wright, you know, set out to prove that he was not a crazy man, and he did a good job.  He was quoting Latin, he was doing what he does--what he actually does as opposed to what we've seen.  So that's fine. The failure, however, still becomes, you know, that the Obama people are not happy to see Jeremiah Wright back out there because it gives us a chance to run all the old clips again, at the very least.

It also obscures a, a more fundamental problem which is coming up in this campaign, we are all looking for ways, in our way, to talk about race in the campaign.  But what the, the numbers have shown us, the exit polls have shown us in the last week is that what we don't want to talk about is racism, which is, I think, a, a, a real issue.  The people who said they--that race mattered to them, a lot of them voted for Hillary Clinton.  I'm not calling the voters racists, but I think, at some point, we have to get back to a word that we're very scared of using in our society, which is the reason why people vote against someone because of their race is not a positive reason, it's a negative, and racism is a negative quality.  We have to find some way to embrace talking about that in our coverage, and we're kind of nervous about that.

MR. RUSSERT:  You wrote about this this week.

MR. WOLFFE:  We wrote about this, and we polled about it extensively.  And one of the remarkable things we've seen over the course of the last year is when we asked the catchall question, "Is America ready for an African-American president?" a year ago it stood in the 50s, about 54 percent; today in the 70s.  This country, as it's watched this election move forward, is taking a different view.  Now, that's not saying the people who, who say that America isn't ready for an African-American politician are saying they are racist, they may just suspect it.  One of the things we saw in 2000 was the group that was most skeptical about Joe Lieberman as a Jewish vice president were actually Jewish voters.  So there is something of a recalibration of people's attitudes going on as this campaign has gone forward.  We shouldn't lose sight of how positive that is.

MR. RUSSERT:  David, we had in the debate--and Andrea--Hillary Clinton jumping on Barack Obama about William Ayers, the Weatherman, is one of the questions, and Jeremiah Wright.  John McCain has now picked up on the William Ayers situation.  Tom Hayden, the former radical from the '60s, has now written a piece which is basically saying, "Time out." And he writes this, "Hillary is blind to her own roots in the sixties.  ...  She was in Chicago for three nights during the 1968 street confrontations.  ...  She was involved in the New Haven defense of Bobby Seale during his murder trial in 1970, as the lead scheduler of student monitors.

"Most significantly in terms of her recent attacks on Barack, after Yale law school, Hillary went to work for the left-wing Bay Area law firm of Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein, which specialized in Black Panthers and West Coast labor leaders prosecuted for being communists.  Two of the firm's partners, according to Treuhaft, were communists and two others `tolerated communists.'

"All these were honorable words and associations in my mind, but doesn't she see how the Hillary of today would accuse the Hillary of the sixties of associating with black revolutionaries who fought gun battles with police officers, and defending pro-communist lawyers who backed communists?  Doesn't the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, whom Hillary attacks today, represent the very essence of the black radicals Hillary was associating with in those days?"

Are we going to have a debate in November about past associations and pastors, or we going to have a debate about the war, health care and economy?

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