'Meet the Press' transcript for May 25, 2008

MR. RUSSERT:  And we're back.  Let's show the cover of Newsweek magazine, and there it is, Obama on the cover, talking about the issue of race.

Jon Meacham, based on your reporting, on the polling you did, a simple question that leads the Newsweek Web site, "Is America ready for a black president?"

MR. MEACHAM:  In theory yes, in practice it's a toss-up.  In theory, 70 percent of Americans, American voters, say they are ready.  That's up from 37 percent just eight years ago.  And yet, when you then go to specifics, Senator Obama is running even with Senator McCain.  He--our pollsters polled a--went inside the numbers and looked at white Democrats who scored fairly high on something they called the racial resentment index.  People expressing some hostility toward racial questions.  Thirty percent, 29 percent of white Democrats fell into the high category there.  And, of those folks, nearly twice as many were ambivalent, obviously, about Senator Obama as for Senator Clinton.  And so you have a large number of people who are, in fact, still affected by the issue of race.  To my mind it is one of the great questions of the campaign.  It is very difficult to talk about.  It makes white people very queasy and...

MS. IFILL:  Black people, too.

MR. MEACHAM:  Black people, too.  I wasn't going to...

MS. IFILL:  I'll speak for them.

MR. MEACHAM:  Well, I was--we were joking earlier, I was going to say, "As a white Southerner, I have these important views."

I think it's--I think we have to talk about it.  And I know the Obama campaign doesn't love it, to put it mildly, but you look at the results in Kentucky, you look at the results in West Virginia, this is--it's still a, it's still a big deal.  And again, to go back to where--why isn't McCain at 30 percent in the polls, it's partly because both Senator Clinton has her issues and Senator Obama has his issues.  Is it entirely racial?  No.  But is it clearly a factor?  I think it would be foolhardy and naive of us to act as though his race is not a factor going forward.

MR. RUSSERT:  In Kentucky and West Virginia, Gwen, people who said race was important to them, they voted overwhelmingly against Barack Obama.  On the other hand, in states like Virginia and Iowa and Wisconsin, overwhelming numbers of white Democrats embraced Barack Obama.

MS. IFILL:  I want to revise and extend my remarks.  Black people are not queasy about talking about race, they're only queasy when we talk about it with white people who are queasy about talking about it.  Because it's part of our lives.  We have to think--it comes out of the filter of everything we talk about.  I've always found it interesting when--especially in this latest kind of conversation about gender that we've been having.  You know, these same exit polls that show that people vote against the black candidate who say that race matters to them, show that people vote for the woman candidate who say that gender matters, which means that gender is a positive.  The difficulty throughout this campaign, Barack Obama's, has, has been trying to figure out how he draws that line.  Some people ask me, "Why, why do you call him black? Why don't you call him biracial, that's what he is." Well, he is what he defines himself as.  But then, if he defines himself as African-American, he then has to take on all the baggage that comes with that, which I, I think that Newsweek does a service to try to peel back what people really mean when they say these things.  So not only has he had this two steps forward, three steps back in this campaign--primary campaign, talking about race, in which he really only gave that big race speech when forced to turn a corner under--after Jeremiah, Jeremiah Wright.  But it's only going to get to be a bigger and more important conversation as we go forward into the general.

MR. MEACHAM:  We get a--we have a good piece, open letter to Obama from Harold Ford, the congressman from Tennessee who very nearly won a Senate race there in 2006, in which he talks about "just get out and let them meet you. Walk across Kentucky, walk across West Virginia." Because I think, as we all know in our own lives, it's harder to caricature someone whom you've actually spoken to or whom you actually know.  Complexity in this case, I think, is Senator Obama's friend.  And the more he can show that he is a man of parts, the more Americans will make a more rational political decision.

MS. IFILL:  And where should John McCain walk across?  Which state should he be walking across?

MR. MEACHAM:  There are a lot of states.

MS. IFILL:  Yeah.

MR. MEACHAM:  But I think he--but, but McCain is a slightly better-known national figure.  I mean, he has been in national life, more or less, for 30 years.

MS. KEARNS GOODWIN:  I think you're right.  I mean, I think his life story is so compelling, and many people don't know it.  One of the comments in your article, somebody said, "He's not real.  He's not an American." Which means they don't know about the fact that he has a white mother, a black father, grandparents who fought in the war.  When that life story becomes known, he will not seem too--you know, too different, as he seems right now.

MR. RUSSERT:  One of the other issues...

MS. KEARNS GOODWIN:  At least that's the hope.

MR. RUSSERT:  ...he's dealing with is faith.  All these Internet rumors rampant "He's a Muslim, he's a Muslim, he's a Muslim." Well, he's a Christian and, and was baptized very publicly in the Trinity Church in Chicago.

David Brody, you unveiled this flyer in Kentucky:  "Barack Obama for President.  My faith teaches me I can sit in church and pray all I want, but I won't be fulfilling God's will unless I go out and do the Lord's work." Obama openly professing his belief in Jesus Christ, as a candidate and comfortable in talking about it.

MR. BRODY:  Very comfortable.  And the real untold story of this campaign from a faith perspective is what the Obama campaign is doing all across this country with the religious outreach programs.  I mean, this weekend they're in Montana, and they're having faith and value discussions--family, faith, value discussions about Barack Obama's faith and all of this other stuff that is in homes across this country; that they're actually having 20 to 30, sometimes a hundred people or so gathering around family rooms, you know, just living rooms and talking about this.  You know, John McCain is not doing that.  You know, their religious outreach team is more talking to national religious leaders and, and like.  But the--but Joshua DuBois and some of the--that's the religious outreach director for the Obama campaign--I mean, they have been on this for a year.  They did it in Iowa; we were with them there.  And this is very important because, at the end of the day, they--what Jon, you were talking about, that they need to go ahead and walk with these folks all across the country, and, and they are doing that.  And they're doing it from a faith perspective.

MS. IFILL:  But after a year, the Newsweek poll shows, what, 58 percent say he's Christian, 22 percent say they don't know what he is, 11 percent still say Muslim.  But after a year, the Newsweek poll shows, what, 58 percent say he's Christian, 22 percent say they don't know what he is, 11 percent still say Muslim.  This is after a year of that.

MS. DOWD:  That's right.

MS. MARCUS:  This is the paradox, I think, of Senator Obama.  He is, amazingly enough--I say amazingly because it's not what we're used to in presidential politics--as a Democrat, more comfortable about talking about his faith, I think, than Senator McCain is talking about his.  It's, I think, more central to his life.  At the same time, the degree of ignorance about his faith, even what his faith is, that persists after this campaign that seems endless is really remarkable.

MS. IFILL:  Yeah.

MR. RUSSERT:  One of the endorsements that John McCain actively sought was John Hagee, Pastor John Hagee.  This is McCain in February when he received that endorsement.

(Videotape, February 27, 2008)

SEN. JOHN McCAIN (R-AZ):  I'm very honored by Pastor John Hagee's endorsement today.

Pastor Hagee, I'm grateful for your support.  I'm, I'm grateful for your guidance.  I'm grateful for your leadership.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT:  "Grateful for your guidance, for your leadership." Sam Stein, in the Huffington Post, broke this story:  "John Hagee, the controversial evangelical leader and endorser of Senator McCain, argued in a late 1990s sermon that Nazis had operated on God's behalf to chase the Jews from Europe and shepherd them to Palestine.  According to the reverend, Adolf Hitler was a `hunter' sent by God who was tasked with expediting God's will of having the Jews re-establish a state of Israel."

This is after Hagee had said some very scornful things about Catholicism. McCain on Thursday was forced to issue this statement:  "Obviously I find these remarks and others deeply offensive and indefensible, and I repudiate them.  I did not know of them before Reverend Hagee's endorsement.  I feel I must reject his endorsement as well.  I have said I do not believe Senator Obama shares Reverend Wright's extreme views, but let me also be clear, Reverend Hagee was not and is not my pastor or spiritual adviser.  I did not attend his church for 20 years.  I've denounced statements he made immediately upon learning of them, as I do again today."

Maureen Dowd.

MS. DOWD:  Well, I'm going to have to come back to Gwen's line.  I think it's always better not to riff on Hitler.  And here's a guy who thinks we're in a nice little cult called the Catholic Church, and McCain stuck with him after that.  But then when he got in trouble with the Jews, that was one too many, you know, ethnic groups that McCain couldn't offend, so he dropped him.  But it makes you miss the McCain who, you know, stood up against the agents of tolerance rather than pander to them.

MS. IFILL:  And...

MR. RUSSERT:  The fact that he has now separated himself from Hagee and from the pastor from Ohio, Rod Parsley?

MR. BRODY:  Yeah.

MR. RUSSERT:  What happens now to McCain with the evangelical community?

MR. BRODY:  Well, it's a tap dance.  I mean, and this is going to be a tap dance all the way through November.  I, I think part of the problem with the, with the McCain camp with looking at it, is they're looking at it as an endorsement strategy.  "Let's get a couple of big evangelical leaders to endorse McCain." But what they really need to be looking at is infrastructure. They need to be looking at, you know, how do they mobilize the base.  How do they turn out the base.  They need to really concentrate more on that, and instead of going for the, you know, the big endorsement.  I mean, the John Hagee situation is a good example of John McCain not really knowing much about the evangelical community.  I mean, John Hagee is a guy that was big on, on Israel, and that's how they saw it, but they didn't realize that, oh, by the way, if you do a quick Google search, I mean, you're going to see that he said some controversial things along the way.  And so, you know, if, if you have a George Bush in 2004, you know, and people that were with him in that campaign, they would've been able to flag that for McCain.  They don't have the same infrastructure, and that's part of the problem.

MR. RUSSERT:  McCain is in Arizona--here's some tape--meeting with Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts; Bobby Jindal, the governor of Louisiana; Charlie Crist, the governor of Florida.  All--there he is coming down the stairs in the gray hair.  Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania was in Europe. Mike Huckabee is at a wedding anniversary, didn't make the trip.  But now we're in full throttle of a VP selection, Gwen.

MS. IFILL:  You know, it's such kabuki theater.  I mean, we, we know, and we do this every four years, where we have, you know, by the end, it's kind of the ritual, we start to think, "OK, now what's next?  Oh, the vice presidential nomination." And, and, and almost--who knows how much it matters at the end, but we can't help it, it's how we spend our summers every four years.

MS. MARCUS:  What else would we do?

MS. IFILL:  What else would we do?  And therefore, but now they've decided this year, all--both sides, is to just strip it back and let us peek.  When have you ever seen people going for serious vice presidential opportunities, walking down the stairs holding hands before with their significant others? You've just never seen that before.

MR. MEACHAM:  Well, remember, yeah.  Remember, yeah.

MS. IFILL:  And then this week the Obama people carefully let it out that Jim Johnston was doing their vetting process for them.  That wasn't a secret that that got out, you know?

MR. MEACHAM:  Remember, Mondale had people come up the driveway.

MS. IFILL:  Yeah.  The old days, yeah.

MR. MEACHAM:  There was, there was a kind of beauty, there was a kind of beauty pageant quality.

MR. RUSSERT:  Saunter down the driveway as opposed to sprinting down the steps.

MR. MEACHAM:  That's right.  That's right, explains, explains what happened in 1984.

Just very quickly on the pastors, I don't think we talked about Henry II enough in campaigns, and who....

MS. MARCUS:  When did he run?

MS. IFILL:  He ran with Jon.

MR. MEACHAM:  Just stay away from the pastors, you know.  "Who shall rid me of this troublesome priest?" Turbulent priest.  Insight, very quickly, I just think, whenever we can get Henry II.

MR. RUSSERT:  Amen, Brother Jon.

MR. MEACHAM:  Just to throw that out.

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