'Meet the Press' transcript for May 18, 2008

MR. RUSSERT:  And we're back.  Welcome all.

Bob Shrum, you're a long time associate of Ted Kennedy, and before we begin, I'm going to talk to you a little bit about it.  Here's Senator Kennedy on the Senate floor.  Here he is at the Kennedy compound, photos of the Kennedy compound on Friday.  He was taken in an ambulance on Saturday morning to the local hospital, airlifted to Massachusetts General.  You see him there on the stretcher.  The report from his staff out of Massachusetts General is that he had a seizure, but resting comfortably.  What else can you tell us?

MR. BOB SHRUM:  Oh, he was sitting up in bed eating take-out food from Legal Sea Food, wishing he could go sailing, and watching the Boston Red Sox.  He had a restful night, and I'm told that he'll probably have a really restful day unless we say something on this show that upsets him.

MR. RUSSERT:  But you do expect him to be in the hospital...

MR. SHRUM:  He'll be in there--he'll be there for several days for tests and evaluation.

MR. RUSSERT:  Well, obviously, our prayers are with Senator Kennedy as we talk.  Something...

MR. SHRUM:  It was, it was terrifying, if you, if you were a friend, and also, when I think about the country and the role he plays, but I feel a lot better about it today.

MR. RUSSERT:  Well, that's good news.  And our thoughts are with him, and we'll say hello to Senator Kennedy.  And we'll talk politics, something he likes.

Richard Engel sat down with George Bush this morning and asked him about his comments that we had seen in our earlier segment in the Knesset in Israel. Here's the president responding to Richard Engel.

(Videotape)

MR. RICHARD ENGEL:  You said that negotiating with Iran is pointless, and then you went further.  You're saying--you said that it was "appeasement." Were you referring to Senator Barack Obama?  He certainly thought you were.

PRES. BUSH:  You know, my policies haven't changed.  But evidently, the political calendar has.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT:  The president says he's restating his views, it's just the political timetable that's changed.  John McCain, Mike Murphy, after hearing President Bush's comments, had this to say.

(Videotape)

SEN. McCAIN:  This does bring up an issue we'll be discussing with the American people, and that is why, why does Barack Obama, Senator Obama, want to sit down with a state sponsor of terrorism?  It is a serious error on the part of Senator Obama.  It shows naivete and inexperience and lack of judgment to say that he wants to sit down across the table from an individual who leads a country that says--and says that Israel is a stinking corpse, that is dedicated to the extinction of the state of Israel.  My question is, what does he want to talk about?

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT:  And on Friday in South Dakota, Barack Obama responded to both President Bush and Senator McCain.  Let's listen.

(Videotape)

SEN. BARACK OBAMA (D-IL):  That's exactly the kind of appalling attack that's divided our country and that alienates us from the world.  And that's why we need change in Washington.  George Bush and John McCain have a lot to answer for.  They've got to explain why we are now in our sixth year--entering our sixth year of war in Iraq.  They're going to have to explain the fact that Osama bin Laden is still at large and is sending out videotapes with impunity. They've got to answer for the fact that Iran is the greatest strategic beneficiary of our invasion in Iraq.  It made Iran stronger, George Bush's policies.  That's the Bush-McCain record on protecting this country.  Those are the failed policies that John McCain wants to double down on.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT:  Harold Ford Jr., first skirmish on foreign policy.  Who won?

MR. HAROLD FORD JR:  It laid out the differences between the two.  What is clear, I think, is what Barack Obama was saying there.  If you look five years ago, ask yourself a simple question:  Is Iran more dangerous today than it was five or six years ago?  You probably have to answer the question yes, and emphatically.  They're exporting weapons into--to Iraq to arm the Shia, to kill our soldiers, and to upset what we're trying to accomplish there. They're providing weapons in support for Hezbollah, which has upset if not upended our efforts in Lebanon, and for that matter the Lebanese government's efforts to bring some stability and to allow democracy to live.

At the same time, we find ourselves, with Israel, in a more dangerous place probably than they were just five or six years ago.  By ignoring threats, you don't confront them or solve them.  With this president and what John McCain will have to answer, who was clearly demonstrating he will pursue a very similar course, is how will you be different?  And I think the question, I come back to it, what I started with, the American people have to ask themself and answer very simple one:  Are we safer today when it comes to Iran, and is Iran more safe or less dangerous today than they were five or six years ago? This approach we have employed over the last five or six years is not working. What Barack Obama offers is a different, cleaner and better approach.

MR. RUSSERT:  Governor Huckabee.

FMR. GOV. MIKE HUCKABEE (R-AR):  Well, I would disagree that the reason that we're worse off is because of what George Bush has done.  I think it's a little bit disingenuous to say that it's all his fault that things are more dangerous with Iran than they were.  As I look at what happened this week, I've always believed in politics that the counterpunch is more effective than the punch.  So if Barack Obama, instead of taking the punch, had deflected it and then used it as an occasion to say, "He wasn't talking about me, but let me tell you what he should have been talking about," I think it would have been a better political point for him.  But, instead, he allowed himself to take the punch.  And now the frame of this debate is whether or not he has the toughness that John McCain clearly does have to confront enemies.  And I believe Obama made a serious tactical error in that.

MR. RUSSERT:  Bob Shrum.

MR. SHRUM:  I couldn't disagree more.  I think--I mean, I think it's disingenuous--if I step back, what happened this week was that John McCain acquired a third name, a new last name:  John McCain Bush.  And while on the periphery he has some differences with Bush, on the big issues, the war and foreign policy, the economy, health care, he is George Bush.  And if he's Bush 3 instead of the McCain who ran in 2000 when Murphy was running the campaign, he's in big trouble.  Secondly, Barack Obama showed how effective he could be fighting back.  I have no doubt that the American people agree with him on this issue.  Appeasement is not talking to the other side.  Richard Nixon talked to China when they were the state sponsors of the war in Vietnam against America, and it was the right thing to do and it helped advance America's national interest and maybe even to end that war.

GOV. HUCKABEE:  John McCain...

MR. SHRUM:  So that's what--so that's what I really...

GOV. HUCKABEE:  Yeah.

MR. SHRUM:  The amazing thing is the White House backgrounded people that Bush was talking about Obama.  Then when it backfired, they said, "Oh no, we weren't talking about Obama," and they decided to attack poor Jimmy Carter.

MR. RUSSERT:  Mike.

GOV. HUCKABEE:  John McCain is his own man.  Anyone who knows John McCain knows that he has an independence in him that is going to be very difficult for anybody to say that he is George Bush third term.

MR. SHRUM:  He's the one who said it.  He got big-footed, and then he adopted this, this policy that Bush put out there.

MR. MIKE MURPHY:  Yeah.

MR. RUSSERT:  Mike Murphy, was it politically helpful for the day John McCain was laying out his vision of his first term...

MR. MURPHY:  Right.

MR. RUSSERT:  ...for the president to inject himself into the race with his words?

MR. MURPHY:  Well, the politics of it were a bit of a jumble.  The policy I think is a winner for John McCain.  Even Hillary Clinton, representing about half the Democratic votes, said it was irresponsible and naive for Barack Obama to adopt this essentially equivalency policy that the horrible dictator of Iran should be treated like the prime minister of Denmark and have any kind of conversation.

MR. RUSSERT:  No...

MR. SHRUM:  Is that, is that what they said?

MR. MURPHY:  No, no, no, but it, it, it--don't interrupt, Bob.

MR. RUSSERT:  Just a minute.  Senator Clinton, in her defense, she did condemn President Bush's comments when she was in South Dakota.

MR. MURPHY:  Right.  But, but Barack Obama has taken the "talk as policy" argument to a full extreme, and he's been criticized for it.  But the point is the politics of it.  I think John McCain is clearly an independent-minded guy who is a better person to prosecute that argument, which I think is an argument the American people will agree with, than, unfortunately, the president right now.  That's the political reality.  So it was a bit of a jumble on political tactics.  But in the longer view, this is a winning issue for McCain because Barack Obama's great weakness is his naivete on foreign policy.

MR. FORD:  Barack Obama's the only candidate running for president who's made clear that he's willing to use military force in Pakistan, if necessary, to go after al-Qaeda and their growth and their proliferation there in that region along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.  Whether you agree with it or not, you can't call him a weakling.  You certainly can't suggest that he's not prepared to use force if necessary.

MR. MURPHY:  Not weak, naive.

MR. FORD:  Secondly, this country over the last six or seven years has seen oil prices shoot up, which has mean--which has meant regimes who have gone after and tried to upset and, for that matter, disrupt what progress we're seeking to make in the region, we've armed them, we've funded them.  So we can't have it both ways.  I like President Bush personally, but if you're analyzing this as a business person, as a farmer, as a Tennessee doctor or nurse or a fireman or a policeman, you've got to wonder and ask yourself the question, has he really succeeded, as well-intended as he has been?  What Barack Obama has offered and what John McCain will offer will be two totally different approaches.  If you--I concede and admit, gladly, that John McCain is a tough patriot and a warrior.  But I will not concede and I don't believe this country will concede that Barack Obama can't be trusted to be tough, that he can't be trusted to be smart, and can't be trusted to lead this country down a safer and better path in the Middle East.

MR. MURPHY:  Do you think Barack will have a tougher line on Iran than McCain will?

MR. FORD:  I know this, Barack Obama said he's willing to use force to go find al-Qaeda in Pakistan.  John McCain has not.

MR. MURPHY:  Well.

MR. FORD:  John McCain has supported policies over the last seven years, albeit well-intended, but have not worked.  The country wants a different path.  Barack Obama's challenge, I'll concede, you cannot meet with foreign leaders, with terrorists, rather, and those who lead rogue nations without some conditions.

MR. MURPHY:  Right.  Well, that's the point.

MR. FORD:  He's made clear, he's made clear, however, that those conditions, he assumed that was implicit in those meetings, as he had the debate with Hillary Clinton.  If, indeed, we're going to debate process, I'll take my man any, any, any moment, any time of the day.

MR. MURPHY:  But, but, in a quick footnote, the mistake was he didn't make those conditions explicit, which is generally the, the rule of those kind of dialogues.

MR. FORD:  Implicit, explicit, change is what Americans what.

MR. SHRUM:  This is a tone, this is a tone, this is a tone deaf irrelevant debate.  I mean, Secretary of Defense Gates is saying that we ought to have contacts with Iran.  We have negotiated with Iran.  We're now sending hundreds of millions of dollars worth of food to North Korea, which--a country we refused to talk with for a long time.  The fact is that toughness does not consist in refusing to talk.  Toughness refuse--consists in conceding, and, and real mistakes consist in ignoring problems and just saying...

MR. MURPHY:  Yeah, but, Bob, you're redefining...

MR. SHRUM:  Look, the Vietnam War went on for two or three years longer because we argued about the shape of the table instead of sitting down and talking.

MR. MURPHY:  Bob.  Yeah, but Bob, you're missing the point of the argument, which is all talk is not the same.  Talk of conditions at one level is--what Barack--the mistake Barack Obama made that Hillary Clinton jumped on him for was implying that he would talk to anybody, any leader of any country.  And we all know that the rules of diplomacy have layers at which you negotiate what kind of talking...

MR. SHRUM:  He didn't say, he didn't say it would go in the first...

MR. MURPHY:  ...because talk is reward.

MR. SHRUM:  He didn't say...

MR. MURPHY:  Oh, that's what he implied.

MR. SHRUM:  ...we'd go in the first--talk is not, talk is not reward.

MR. RUSSERT:  And there is an interview with James Rubin, as you know, from Senator McCain where he said that, in time, we would have to talk with Hamas.

MR. MURPHY:  Right.  Well, but I think if you look, like many of us did, at the full YouTube of that, I think Rubin mischaracterized it in his op-ed. I--McCain campaign jumped on him appropriately.  The--McCain had a lot of qualifications, if you look at the full context of it, which is not what Rubin paraphrased...

MR. FORD:  But, but, Mike, if we concede that point, why can't you...

MR. MURPHY:  ...in that op-ed, and started that fight, so.

MR. FORD:  ...why can't, you concede the point on Barack?

MR. MURPHY:  McCain has always put conditions on any engagement with any kind of rogue regime.

MR. RUSSERT:  Let me, let me move on...

MR. MURPHY:  Yeah.

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