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'Meet the Press' transcript for June 8, 2008
Broadcast videos, highlights |
 Netcast June 8: We devote the full hour to insights & analysis on the race for the White House with NBC's team of veteran political reporters: Ron Allen, Lee Cowan, David Gregory, Andrea Mitchell, Kelly O'Donnell, and Chuck Todd. |
 | Slide show |
 | 60 years of ‘Meet the Press’ A photographic look back at the longest-running program in television history and the guests who graced the broadcast – from Martin Luther King Jr. to Jimmy Hoffa. more photos |
MR. RUSSERT: How about this? Associated Press says this in terms of a pro. "She has enough experience and political heft," as demonstrated by this ad. Remember this one.
(Videotape)
NARRATOR: (From Clinton political ad) It's 3 AM, and your children are safe and asleep. But there's a phone in the White House, and it's ringing. Who do you want answering the phone?
(End videotape)
MR. RUSSERT: The con, according to AP, however, is "You two don't seem to like each other very much." Remember this from January.
(Videotape)
SEN. CLINTON: I don't think I'm that bad.
SEN. OBAMA: You're likable enough, Hillary, no doubt about it.
SEN. CLINTON: You know--thank you so much, Barack.
(End videotape)
MR. RUSSERT: Ron Allen.
MR. ALLEN: I had a thought. Remember the meeting at Dianne Feinstein's house the other day?
MR. RUSSERT: Friday night.
MR. ALLEN: Secret meeting. The, the story went Barack said, "Oh, we're leaving," and they were laughing and all that. But some--we really don't know what happened. It might have been that she was "throwing the kitchen sink at me," then "The buffet's coming." Remember that line? That could have been transposed onto that particular event. And who knows what went on that--and that's one of the biggest mysteries in my mind, is what is their personal relationship? Do, do they get along? And the other way I look at it, it's sort of like, you know, in our own world if, if you were looking for a promotion to a job, and some guy who's 15 years younger than you came along, who you'd mentored, and, and got the job and everybody rallied around him, how would you feel?
MR. GREGORY: But they didn't mentor him.
MR. ALLEN: And if, if that's...
MR. GREGORY: They didn't, they didn't mentor him at any point, they just had to deal with him bursting out on the scene.
I think for Barack Obama, look, this is his party now. The Clintons are always going to have to be managed--right?--because they are formidable couple, including a former president and now a nominee who, who, who had a very successful campaign. So this is a difficult choice for Barack Obama. What is his political brand, and how is he going to deal with this force within the party? This will be an exercise in great judgment for him. And yes, he's beaten her, and that's significant, but it's not over yet. Because the way he handles this selection or, or lack of selection of her will be seen as very, very important. He has to get them to fall into line, to work towards his ends. Now, if that's best served being inside the administration, that's one route. If it's having her in the Senate and championing health care, that's another route. But they are going to have to be managed, and Barack Obama's got to walk a very difficult path here to get them under his wing now, which might be difficult for them.
MS. MITCHELL: In fact, I think that the meeting--the reason for the meeting was partly to tamp down all of that speculation and to clear the brush so that she could have her moment yesterday and be surrounded by her supporters and embrace him. And...
MR. RUSSERT: But it was Senator Clinton, Andrea, with the New York congressional delegation on Tuesday who said she'd be open to the vice presidency.
MS. MITCHELL: And, in fact, she is open to the vice presidency. She wants it. She clearly wants it. And what the choreography of the meeting at Dianne Feinstein's was to say, "This is going to be my decision." Now, you can look at the, the clues. He chooses Jim Johnson to head the team doing the vetting, not a fan of Hillary Clinton. I mean, there are all sorts of other kind of inside games going on there. But if it comes down to he has to make a decision and sees where the numbers are, I could imagine a scenario where he would choose her, and yesterday's speech was an audition. And look at the crowd and look at the composition of that crowd. And by coincidence, actually, not by planning, it was held right at the end of the Race for the Cure, that you had thousands of women who had just been running and walking to try to raise money to cure breast cancer, and a lot of the people in that crowd were wearing the T-shirts and the hats. It was a ready-made crowd just four blocks away.
MR. RUSSERT: Chuck, isn't, isn't this the bottom line? In August, Barack Obama will look at the electoral college map, look at the polling data, see how he's doing with white women and Hispanics, blue-collar workers, and make a tough, hard-headed, cold-hearted decision as to whether or not he needs to put Hillary Clinton on the ticket?
MR. TODD: I think that's right. I mean, it, it is going to come down to the map. I think what's interesting is I found out yesterday that a top Clinton aide has been reading a lot of Kennedy--a lot of Johnson and Bobby Kennedy biographies to learn what was that rivalry like. And this person said to me it is very similar, the LBJ/Bobby Kennedy. He's reading this stuff, and he's sitting there saying, "Wow, there's a lot of similarities here about how both of the principals did everything they could to keep their aides from bad-mouthing the other." Lots of, lots of odd interplay there. But for this to work, there is another secret meeting that needs to take place, and that's between Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. And I'm told that Bill Clinton is not over this yet. Hillary Clinton is over this, to a point. Bill Clinton believes that he was turned into a racist and believes the Obama campaign did it to him, believes that the Obama campaign has tarnished his legacy in the '90s. That "turn the page" stuff is a way of saying the '90s were a failure, not a success. The bitterness in Clinton world is in that Harlem office where President Clinton resides.
MS. MITCHELL: And some people...
MR. RUSSERT: We're, we're going to...
MS. MITCHELL: Tim, some people felt that he looked like he had been crying yesterday.
MR. RUSSERT: Yeah. Yeah. I think...
MS. MITCHELL: Some people close to him.
MR. RUSSERT: We're going to get to Bill Clinton in just a second, because there's some things he did say and we want to put them into perspective and focus.
But you do raise the issue, Chuck Todd, of what would it be like if Hillary Clinton was the vice president with Bill Clinton as an adviser to her? Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former national security adviser to, to President Jimmy Carter, was on "Morning Joe" the other day and talked about how he envisioned Hillary Clinton as the vice president. Let's watch.
(Videotape)
DR. ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: If she was vice president, there's at least a high risk that it will be a dysfunctional presidency because in the executive office of the president, across the street from the White House, there would be a government in exile and also a government in waiting. And that wouldn't create a very good atmosphere.
(End videotape)
MR. RUSSERT: "A government in waiting."
MR. GREGORY: Yeah, you know, and one of the things you said, and I think correctly, was that Obama will make a tactical, hard-headed decision about the landscape of the electoral college by August. But I also think he's going to think about how he governs and with whom he governs. Let's bear in mind that the role of the vice president now is so much more powerful. And he's run a campaign where one of the edicts sent down the line was "no drama." There could be a lot of drama with Hillary Clinton as your VP and the former President Bill Clinton around. And I think that's something that he may really want to have to deal with.
MR. RUSSERT: Now, the--another pro, according to the AP for Hillary Clinton, "She puts a battler on your team." She knows how to fight and how to engage, how to attack. Here's Hillary Clinton here during the primary.
(Videotape, March 6, 2008):
SEN. CLINTON: I think it's imperative that each of us be able to demonstrate we can cross the commander in chief threshold, and I believe that I've done that. Certainly Senator McCain has done that. And, and you'll have to ask Senator Obama with respect to his candidacy.
(End videotape)
MR. RUSSERT: Ouch. Commander in chief. AP said the con is "Battlers can overdo it." Here's an example.
(Videotape, January 21, 2008)
SEN. CLINTON: I was fighting against those ideas when you were practicing law and representing your contributor, Rezko, in his slum landlord business in inner-city Chicago.
SEN. OBAMA: No, no, no, no, no.
(End videotape)
MR. RUSSERT: See how those Democrats love one another, Ron Allen.
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