'Meet the Press' transcript for June 15, 2008

MR. BROKAW: We don't have a big tradition in this country of people being in politics then in journalism, or going from journalism back into politics. But Tim really dropped that firewall because he did it with such integrity.

MS. KEARNS GOODWIN: Absolutely. I mean, he was able to become an objective journalist, SO he had passions inside of him. You know, I think what James said is so true. Eleanor Roosevelt once said about Franklin and Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, that the best men still have a lot of the little boy left in them. And that was what Tim had. I once said to him, "Why don't you run for office?" because he had such a personality. You know, they also said of FDR that being with him with his shining personality and his bouyant sparkle was like opening your first bottle of champagne. I think we felt that with Tim. But he said, "No, I have found my vocation. I love this thing."

I mean, journalism was to him the highest profession. He, he, he set the standard. You know, the old days you had Edward R. Murrow and you had Walter Cronkite, People of authority who would look out at the television screen. But what Tim did was to make that transition to the world of relationship talking. That's what so much television is now, talking. Think about how no razzle dazzle in this show. What it had were people sitting around the table and talking, talking like you might have talked 200 years ago but with civility in a time of polarized country.

MR. BARNICLE: The other thing, Doris and James and everyone, is that there were no strangers in Tim's life. People knew Tim, and they knew him because this X-ray tube, this MRI that we call a television camera, clearly, people sit in their living rooms and they get a sense of who the human being is. And he was such a magnificent human being. They knew him. They knew him in airports, they knew him at ball parks, they knew him at Capitol Hill, they knew him at bus stops. You can be, be stopped by strangers today and yesterday throughout this country, you can get e-mails from ordinary people who knew Tim. And you know what, they did know him because he was a spectacular guy, and he was a little boy in clothes that he got from...(unintelligible)...Liquidator, like I do.

MR. BROKAW: I always said that people asked me about his wardrobe, and I said he actually has three tailors. L.L. and Bean. There came to be something called the Russert Primary. A lot of candidates who waltzed into these studios, crawled out of here, their hopes were left on this studio floor. And we want to share with you now what we call The Russert Primary, people running for president or running for high office, and then they meet Tim Russert and MEET THE PRESS.

(Videotape, March 22, 1992)

MR. RUSSERT: Can you assure the Democrats in--across the country this morning that there is nothing in your background that might emerge to doom your candidacy and the Democratic Party?

FMR. GOV. BILL CLINTON: Well, I can assure you that there is nothing in my background which is inconsistent with what I have told you already.

(End videotape)

(Videotape, December 17, 1995)

MR. RUSSERT: What happens if Ross Perot runs as an independent? What does it do to your chances?

SEN. BOB DOLE: Doesn't help.

(End videotape)

(Videotape, November 21, 1999)

MR. RUSSERT: Which Supreme Court justice do you really respect?

PRES. GEORGE W. BUSH: Well, that's--Anthony Scalia's one.

MR. RUSSERT: He is someone who wants to overturn Roe v. Wade.

PRES. BUSH: Well, he's a, he's a--there's a lot of reasons why I like Judge Scalia.

(End videotape)

(Videotape, March 5, 2000)

MR. RUSSERT: George W. Bush is the nominee of the Republican Party. If that's the case, you will support him.

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Yes.

MR. RUSSERT: If he came to you and said, "John, let's unite this party. I need you to be my running mate?"

SEN. McCAIN: No. No way. The vice president has two duties. One is to inquire daily as to the health of the president, and the other is to attend the funerals of third world dictators. And neither of those do I find an enjoyable exercise.

(End videotape)

(Videotape, March 10, 2000)

MR. RUSSERT: I want to ask you a very simple question. Do you believe that life begins at conception?

FMR. VICE PRES. AL GORE: No. I believe there's a difference.

(End videotape)

(Videotape, April 13, 2004)

MR. RUSSERT: Would you agree to release all your military records?

SEN. JOHN KERRY: I have. I've, I've shown them--they're available to you to come and look at. I think that's a very unfair characterization by that person. I mean, politics is politics.

(End videotape)

(Videotape, November 11, 2007)

MR. RUSSERT: This is must-win.

SEN. BARACK OBAMA: Well, we want to--we have to do well in Iowa.

MR. RUSSERT: But, Senator, it's must--it's must-win.

SEN. OBAMA: Oh, well, there--look, there is no doubt that we have to do well in Iowa. If we do not do well in Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina...

MR. RUSSERT: The race is over.

SEN. OBAMA: Well I think that's true for any of the candidates.

(End videotape)

(Videotape, January 18, 2008)

MR. RUSSERT: Doris Kearns Goodwin said what's the biggest public adversity a person has ever faced? What's yours?

SEN. CLINTON: Well, I think we all know that. We lived through it, didn't we? And it's something that was very painful and very hurtful.

(End videotape)

(Videotape, January 27, 2008)

MR. RUSSERT: I will show you where I got the quote from. I got it from John McCain, and here it is. "[McCain] is refreshingly blunt when he tells me, `I'm going to be honest: I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues. I still need to be educated.'" Wall Street Journal, November 26th, 2005. You repeated it to the Boston Globe in December of '07. You said it.

SEN. McCAIN: OK. Let me tell you what I was trying to say and what I meant.

(End videotape)

MR. BROKAW: That pretty well sums it up. "What I meant."

I was always struck, Mary, by the fact that so many politicians came here and became deer caught in the headlamps, that when Tim would come after him in that civilized but persistent fashion, it would have been helpful to the candidates if they would have said from time to time, "You know what, Tim, you got me there."

MS. MATALIN: It's--they were double dumb if the got caught in the headlights, because, you know, we're all talking about how much he liked politics. He genuinely liked politicians. He respected politicians. He knew that they got blamed for everything, got credit for nothing. He knew how much they meant. He never treated them with the cynicism that attends some of these interviews. So they had a place to be loved. He understood who they were. They were a combination, as was he, of idealism and realism, so if you messed up on this show, it was nobody's fault but your own.

MR. BROKAW: And, Mike, he was also fascinated by power and the use of it, political power.

MR. BARNICLE: Yeah, he was absolutely fascinated by that. But to, to Mary's point, one of the things about Tim is that his life was so all-encompassing, with his family at the top of the tier. And Tim loved politics and loved politicians, and he loved baseball and football and basketball, because he could summon up winners and losers, and, and a score at the end of the game, you know, whether it was election night or at the end of a Yankee/Red Sox doubleheader. And he was always in the game, and Tim came to this game late, as we've talked about earlier. He came from Pat Moynihan's office and Mario Cuomo's office. And one of the things about Tim--Dick Eaton, his, his longtime friend, was telling me earlier, 1977, he goes to work for Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who he idolized in the United States Senate. And Tim arrives and is surrounded by charter members of a Mensa society--Yale Law, Harvard Law. And Tim is from Buffalo, and he was always from Buffalo. And Daniel Patrick Moynihan sensed it in him, and they were having a conversation about, you know, "Don't worry, you're not going to be intimidated by these Mensa members who you're working with." And Tim acknowledged that. And Pat Moynihan told Tim that day, as Dick Eaton, Dick Eaton told me, he told Tim, he said, "You know," he said, `what they know, Tim, you can learn. But what you know, they can never learn." And there was so much of that in Tim each and every day that he brought to this program and this country.

MR. BROKAW: I always thought that if Tim had gone into the priesthood, he would have been a cardinal, or maybe...

MR. CARVILLE: A pope. Come on.

MR. BROKAW: I was going to say. The first...

Ms. KEARNS GOODWIN: Don't stop at cardinal.

MR. BROKAW: Yeah, the first holy father from this country. If he'd gone into politics, he certainly would have been a governor and maybe president of the United States. He had enormous ambition, and people need to know about that, and I mean it in the right sense of the word. He had this path that he could never have imagined as a working-class kid from Buffalo, that would take him to the summit, and he wasn't going to, he wasn't going to forfeit his opportunities along the way.

MR. BARNICLE: Tom...

MS. KEARNS GOODWIN: And ambition, ambition is a worthy thing, though, if it's put in the purpose of the country.

MR. BROKAW: Right.

MS. KEARNS GOODWIN: And I think it's important for people to understand that. You know, a couple weeks ago when Teddy Kennedy was diagnosed with his brain tumor, we were talking about the fact that Rose Kennedy had once said to me that, if her children who died young, could to come back, meaning Joe Jr. and Jack and Bobby, they would still choose the lives they've been given to lead even though they had shortness of years because they had such productivity, such achievement. And Tim said to me, you know, "I would feel that way, too. If I, if I didn't have any more right now, I've had the life that I've wanted to lead, except that I want to see Luke grow up. I want to see him have a child. I want to have him be a father." And I just keep thinking about how extraordinary his life was, just as Mike said, everything he had he loved. He said, "I love my family, I love sports, I love this program." The people around him loved him, so he led a full life. He just wasn't give the length of years that he deserved.

MR. BROKAW: Well, and...

MR. BARNICLE: There was, there was, Tom, to your point about Tim, you know, may have been a cardinal or a pope, he was very Catholic in the big C definition of, of the faith, and, and he was a Jesuit-educated Catholic. And he brought to this table, to this form, to his life, elements of what we used to call working priests, Jesuits and Marian Oles, dealing with people who were damaged, the most vulnerable among us. That's what he brought to his life, this program, each and every day. He recognized the flaws in human beings and in himselves.

MS. IFILL: You know, you know, Tom, one of the things I--that reminds me of, one of the--this has been a horrible weekend, and one of the most calming, soothing things was told to me by a friend of ours who used to work with this program, Collette Rooney. And she was talking about how there was this long line of Irish-Catholic Pauls who were all talking to each other and always told stories, and he was a great Irish storyteller. But that she was comforted by the idea that somewhere, Mary McGory, and perhaps Moynihan, are standing, they're holding the door open, saying, "Catch me up on what's been going on. I hear it's been a great year."

MR. BROKAW: You know, I don't--the only comfort I found in the, in the events of the last several days is that, in many ways, this is the greatest year of Tim's life. He was so proud of all the work that Maureen was doing for Vanity Fair, the big story on Sarkozy recently, the seminal work that she did in Russia on what was going on, Luke graduates from Boston College, and the greatest political year of the last 50 years, Tim was in the midst of that morning, noon and night.

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